The modern Internet world has been a blessing for anyone who has to coordinate large groups and working teams, but getting the message across in real time is still a challenge. Text messages work but can be slow and take focus away from the task at hand. Orion Labs, Inc. hopes to solve this problem with its voice communication device, the Orion.

To get an inside look at this new communication tool, John Furrier and Jeff Frick, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, invited Dan Phung, software engineer with Orion Labs, to join them and talk about the Orion at the Splunk .conf2015 conference.

Hands-free communications

Phung started the conversation by answering questions about the Orion device. In form, it was a small disk with a button in the center. He wore it clipped to his shirt. By pressing the button, he could set the Orion to live mode, where it would then instantly send anything he said to other members of a call group. He said people often compared it to a combadge from the television show Star Trek.

The purpose of the Orion, he explained, was to enable hands-free group communications without distracting anyone from their task. Users didn’t have to hold the device, look at it or pull it out of their pocket to use it. Instead, all they had to do was talk and listen, either through a speaker or, for private communications, a headphone jack.

Applications and business

The Orion has obvious applications for coordinating teams. With real-time, hands-free communications, team members could stay on the job while keeping up with the latest information. Phung mentioned that emergency response teams employed the Orion, as did others who worked in fields where seconds count. Other users worked in areas where keeping up face-to-face contact is vital; no salesman, for example, wants to be pulled away from a customer to take a phone call.

Meanwhile, Orion Labs has also discovered that communications between companies is invaluable. As a small business, it can’t do everything by itself, so working with partners is core to its operations. The company make use of various products, including Splunk, to do its work. Splunk has become a vital Data as a Service provider.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Splunk .conf2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE