Latest headlines: Christopher Gillespie on the end user experience in the AV world, Mark Coxon on why everyone thinks of “as a service” the wrong way plus news from Teleportivity, INOGENI, Extron, Yamaha, Barco and more
December 18, 2019 | Volume: 12 | Issue: 24
Happy winter break, #AVtweeps! But we all know that just because it’s a university break and most have evacuated the college campuses by now, doesn’t mean the work stops. In fact, it’s just the opposite! Now, with those pesky students out of the way, there’s time and space for updating equipment, installations, etc. But I don’t have to tell you that.
There’s a ton of content in today’s newsletter, to get your head in the game and your heart in the song. We have a couple of columns by Christopher Gillespie, who’s working on a series detailing the AV world from an end user perspective — if you’re an integrator, hi! This will be a fun read for you. We have another by Mark Coxon, and he’s going to tell you why most people in our industry are thinking of all things “as-a-service” the wrong way.
In other news, we have a live demo of Teleportivity in a real live UNC classroom via Gary Kayye, Extron has released additions to its PLUS series of Matrix Switchers, Xantech is shipping its 4K Video-Over-IP Solution. Oh, also — Barco has employed a security update for its ClickShare product after hiring “ethical hackers” who found a security breach.
Thinking more broadly about the overall global AV footprint, I want to get into what we can loosely define as "the three pillars of a robust enterprise AV environment." I have worked at a few companies and talked to lots of people at other companies and the following three pillars seem to really ring true. They are: the AV bill of materials (BOM), the IT service management architecture (ITSM) and the sensor/data footprint.
There are all sorts of arguments for and against AVaaS, but the one that has emerged as a reason that AVaaS will "never" work in certain markets — Service Level Agreements (SLA). The argument goes like this: "AVaaS won't work in my organization because if someone has a problem in a meeting/class/etc. they need support within a few minutes and only in-house staff can get into the building/room in that amount of time."
I don't disagree with the fact that onsite support of this nature dictates that support staff be located within a few minutes walking distance. What I do disagree with is that it has any relevance to the viability of an AVaaS model. Now that you're fired up… let me explain.
Users care about experience. Whether the room is in Bangalore or Boston, they just want to walk in and use it. They don't want to have to open multiple applications, deal with 15 cables or have to point their laptop in the direction of Cupertino or Redmond and pray to the spirit of Bill Gates in order to make this happen.