It all began for me about 15 years ago in my AV integration sales days (even though I had worked in the AV and IT markets since 1991) when Tandberg and Polycom were of course the main brands for integrated as well as stand-alone hardware-based videoconferencing systems. This continued on of course until 2010, when a major shift in the market would take place, and that came with the acquisition of Tandberg by Cisco – a seismic shift at that.

What began to take shape just prior to this as well as what took place soon after led to what could be considered nothing short of an incredible expansion of the videoconferencing market, leading to the current world of unified communications and collaboration. Along with established trendsetters (Vidyo CEO Ofer Shapiro being one of the notables), former executives of Tandberg/Codian (and later Cisco) began to form companies of their own to bring new business models in cloud and VM to the industry. These companies have revolutionized the market in terms of their high-end applications and continued targeted R&D efforts to bring the best possible solution and experience to the end user. Cisco and Polycom in turn have also continued to build on their hardware and software-based offerings.

I was very pleased to have an opportunity to sit down on day three of the show with Carol Zelkin, executive director of the IMCCA, who is well-known by executives, analysts, writers and more who are a part of the AV industry and UCC space, as well as many of those who follow UCC on a regular basis.

Here is my interview with Carol as we discussed the IMCCA, InfoComm 2015 (as well as other InfoComm events) and the current world of UCC (including markets, workspaces and even drones).