f you told me five years ago that seemingly competing AV companies would work closely together to bring products to market on a regular basis, I would have been quite surprised. At the time, the simple idea of competitive AV equipment makers partnering together was virtually nonexistent. Yet here in 2023, that’s precisely what is happening across the AV industry. Many organizations, Biamp included, have begun to join forces for the good of the customer. Today, strategic partnerships are everywhere, and the reason is simple: customers want to purchase solutions, not products.
After all, effective AV technology is mission critical to get work done for practically every industry simply to operate day to day. Even though workers are increasingly spending more time in the traditional office space full-time, for a significant number of employees the ability to work from anywhere remains a necessity, especially for those working on the road or in satellite offices, at least for part of the time. Employees and their employers recognize the value of being able to conduct business efficiently from anywhere, no matter the specific working environment of the team.
f you told me five years ago that seemingly competing AV companies would work closely together to bring products to market on a regular basis, I would have been quite surprised. At the time, the simple idea of competitive AV equipment makers partnering together was virtually nonexistent. Yet here in 2023, that’s precisely what is happening across the AV industry. Many organizations, Biamp included, have begun to join forces for the good of the customer. Today, strategic partnerships are everywhere, and the reason is simple: customers want to purchase solutions, not products.
After all, effective AV technology is mission critical to get work done for practically every industry simply to operate day to day. Even though workers are increasingly spending more time in the traditional office space full-time, for a significant number of employees the ability to work from anywhere remains a necessity, especially for those working on the road or in satellite offices, at least for part of the time. Employees and their employers recognize the value of being able to conduct business efficiently from anywhere, no matter the specific working environment of the team.
This may include troubleshooting minor issues or ensuring optimal performance, including helping the integrator and the end customer create a cohesive AV program across disparate AV hardware and software products—in other words, a complete solution they can rely upon. Customers want and expect AV equipment that is certified to work together, no matter which company it comes from, providing assurance that the equipment will function well within a given organization’s existing IT framework. This is especially true for those organizations that will or have adopted a unified communication (UC) platform.
UC platforms are really the catalyst for this trend, primarily driven by the emergence of leading platform giants at the center of the evolving notion of hybrid work paradigms: Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, and WebEx.
These platforms now set the standards for the industry, requiring manufacturers to not only be compatible with such platforms, but to be certified, assuming they want to stay in the business. Certification provides confidence to everyone along the AV value chain that the equipment will work and work well. Increasingly, this is the top question our customers ask when evaluating their respective conferencing hardware technology—will it work with vendor X or Y? And should some problem arise, can the respective parties address it quickly and effectively?
These types of questions are increasingly common in AV sales scenarios, a reflection on how the industry must come together to ensure that conferencing equipment, from loudspeakers to controllers to amps to microphones and beyond, can all work well together as a solution. For this reason, at Biamp, we created a new position dedicated to cultivating and managing strategic partnerships to ensure our products work with prevailing UC platforms and other hardware systems without fuss.
At Biamp, we are laser-focused on ensuring our customers have an extraordinary experience every time they interact with one of our products. Everything else is secondary. Yes, that may require extra groundwork to ensure compatibility with other AV hardware makers and software vendors, but the alternative is catastrophic: organizations that do not embrace the partnership mentality simply won’t survive.
For the integrator, they too must respond to the emergence of dominant UC platforms by reorienting their respective businesses around not only designing and building AV systems, but also providing ongoing services and support. Integrators must guarantee that the hardware they are designing in and installing works very well with the UC platform of choice. That requires closer collaboration and increased transparency with their customers and the vendors creating the products and services they are installing.
Beyond the integrator, IT teams at the end-user organization level are increasingly tasked with managing AV procurement, design, and ongoing management once the system is up and running. That was a much simpler task before the days of work-from-anywhere became increasingly popular and necessary to keep pace with the speed of business.
For the end user, as they become more aware of and increasingly rely upon UC platforms and the associated hardware to get work done, they expect that equipment to be simple to operate and to perfectly work every time as a single solution.
Take the increasingly popular bring-your-own-meeting (BYOM) scenario. End users, not unreasonably, expect that when they plug in their laptop or other work device to run a meeting, they can do so quickly with just a few clicks—all in a matter of seconds. Then, they expect crystal-clear audio and video no matter where attendees are located. That’s not possible without the strategic partnerships and transparency cultivated between hardware and software vendors and the major UC platforms. It’s the only way to ensure a positive product experience through every step of the AV value chain, from the AV hardware manufacturers to the dealers, the integrators, the customer IT team, and finally, the customer end users.
Strategic partnerships with mutually beneficial trust and transparency can provide the pathways for manufacturers and UC software vendors to share information needed to update firmware more easily, implement patches quickly, and above all, generate client delight that will translate into repeat business and more business in the future for all involved industry players.
Partnerships and transparency together present a winning formula for those with the vision and foresight to recognize where they can support and then profit from the UC platform paradigm dominating the market. Helping customers take a collection of parts and transform that into a unified AV solution, often through close coordination with seemingly competing organizations and traditional partners, is the path of least resistance to success. This is what the customer wants, and who are we to say they can’t have it?
In response, the AV industry has introduced several tools and resources to make hybrid work as pleasant as possible for everyone, especially when it comes to conferencing and collaboration; however, pain points remain. What employers and employees really want is a conferencing environment that is hybrid but equal, ensuring that those outside the office or on the road can have a similar experience as those on campus. Therefore, integrators and their customers increasingly require streamlined yet dependable AV solutions that are standardized, typically around a major UC platform such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom, to create a seamless experience for all.
For the AV manufacturer, if standardization is the benchmark, then products need to be simple to install, configure, and use. The conferencing system should deliver an experience that is simple, fast, and incredibly reliable. To get there, AV professionals must look at all types of users that engage the meeting room, physically and virtually. There will still be microphones, loudspeakers, and video cameras—but they will be deployed as an all-in-one integrated AV solution that boasts intelligent features, including artificial intelligence (AI), that bring individuals in the conference room and those located elsewhere forward, both auditorily and visually.
AV pros need microphone systems that actively track and mix conversations from around the room so that no matter where someone sits in the conference room, they’ll sound as clear as if the microphone was right in front of them. This will also require video conferencing cameras that automatically identify, focus, and zoom in on participants when they speak, similar to how remote participants are presented on screen. Here, high quality audio and video all-in-one conferencing bars are incorporating these features to give IT departments complete meeting room solutions without any changes in the quality of the experience, all the while offering enhanced ease of setup and use.
Ultimately, the all-in-one conferencing AV setup is about taking a complicated system that in the past was often overwhelming and distracting and making it easy. AV systems need to utilize system optimization features, such as automation, natural language processing, and predictive analysis, to improve the relationship that users have with AV assets as well as room utilization. Smart pro AV systems then become more accessible to everyone, even without training. As a result, they can naturally facilitate innovation and productivity for employees in the office, at home, or on the road.
