Earlier this year, when I published my 2024 Kayye’s Krystal Ball predictions, I said, “Xyte will become the AV Cloud and platform of choice.”

Well, since then, the company has secured agreements with Legrand | AV, Avocor, the HDBaseT Alliance, Symetrix, AVPro Edge, Bluesound, and others (that I’m not allowed to talk about yet) to manage their cloud initiatives aimed at the ProAV market.

When I said that Xyte is transformational, I underestimated what would happen in 2024. The companies that have signed up so far are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the announcements coming in the second half of the year. In addition to nearly every display company looking to add Xyte’s cloud-based infrastructure, we will see announcements from some of the biggest audio brands, too!

In fact, Xyte is quickly becoming the default cloud-based management ecosystem for ProAV.

Heck, Intel Capital, Samsung and BlackRock collectively invested $30 million in the company earlier this year — I can’t imagine a better endorsement for their platform than those two companies.

We’re on the verge of a sea change in our market. As more and more AV goes over IP, we have the opportunity to simplify a lot of our market and reengineer the processes such that we can sell way more services. And, there’s no better way to establish a tight and long-term relationship with a client than to provide them a solution rather than a product. And, the holy grail of services will be AV — true AVaaS (AV as a Service).

In fact, interestingly enough, the product that may well push us into the service-sales business may very well be the new Logitech Ghost. Project Ghost (as it’s called now) is a collaboration between Logitech and Steelcase. it’s a complete room system, walls and all. Why is this significant?

Well, we have a situation in which some of the biggest clients in the world want to buy AV gear OpEx rather than CapEx — meaning, they’d rather buy AV systems over time by paying a monthly usage fee (like you do when you lease computers/phones/etc.) rather than paying for it all up front. As an industry thus far, we haven’t been able to do this as that would require every company in a system to cooperate with an AVaaS model (something that Xyte, the company I mentioned in #1, is trying to help our industry do). But now, here comes Logitech and Steelcase with an all-in-one solution that packages all the AV — integrated with UC and furniture. Yes, walls and even a ceiling! This solution is one fixed price, or a large company like Bank of America could buy dozens or even hundreds of them by paying a monthly fee or even based on actual usage, e.g. OpEx.

This could force every major company in AV and UCC to stand up and take notice (and cooperate with Xyte, for example) in their movement to help us go AVaaS.

AVaaS benefits integrators, too. It offers an opportunity for integrators to add managed services to their service portfolio, sell recurring revenue models, extend product life cycles and provide long-term support. These are all places where the end users need guidance and direction. Thus, it creates an opportunity for integrators to provide guidance and create value for clients. As the industry shifts towards AV as a Service, it necessitates an evolution towards cloud-based platforms like Xyte, simplifying connectivity, deployment and management. Integrators must advocate for manufacturers to implement these technologies, ensuring a successful future of our industry.