Last week, the rAVe LAVNCH platform hosted its second AV Cloud Summit. It was incredible and one of the highest-attended events we’ve hosted in 2025. The topic of where the so-called AV Cloud will take us has really amped up since its introduction to the market just a couple of years ago.

Sure, we’ve had cloud-based frameworks for control (think Utelogy), signal management (think ST 2120), and even system-wide facility management, if you brought them into a single brand’s ecosystem. That’s been available to us for a decade or more. But only recently has there been traction to see the idea of a universal cloud become reality—thanks, honestly, to one company that’s stepped up to provide a single-pane-of-glass typography and actual interoperability; that’s Xyte.

But, yesterday’s event included a proverbial mic-drop when it was announced that big brands like Sony, Panasonic, Legrand | AV, BrightSign, Shure and Xyte, alongside a growing list of and a handful of other brands, all agreed to support what’s being dubbed the OpenAV Cloud. OpenAV Cloud aims to address one of the AV industry’s biggest challenges: proprietary systems that hinder integration and innovation — for example, the lack of Open APIs. By developing open, cloud-based APIs and shared frameworks for secure data access and cross-brand compatibility, OpenAV Cloud empowers manufacturers, integrators, and end users to collaborate and innovate seamlessly, assuring interoperability and integration.

This is BIG. There is no way else to spin this. This could change our industry forever, accelerate cloud adoption, and, eventually, AVaaS (AV-as-a-Service).

And, OpenAV Cloud isn’t owned by anyone — no one person, no one company and no one cloud platform or ecosystem. It’s an actual unaffiliated industry-driven initiative that aims to help our industry shift from customized or ecosystem-based silos to a connected, collaborative platform — like what already exists in the IT and SaaS world.

For example, in the design of a new building, an IT contractor can choose NETGEAR, Cisco, Arista Juniper and a handful of other brands to route anything and everything across the IP network. It’s truly plug-and-play — no compatibility issues.

But, in AV, not so much. And, that’s been ok for a long time. But, as we start to look more like the IT market with IP-controllable options, we will have to be more confirmative or risk being taken over by the IT brands, to be frank.

The idea here is simple. It’s not to force every brand to have the same APIs or connectivity points. Quite the contrary. The idea is to simply allow them to talk to one another. Customize all you want — features, options, speeds, resolutions, bandwidths, colors, etc. Just make sure they can all communicate together so they can be centrally managed by you ‚ the AV integrator of the AV end user or facility manager; whomever’s job it is to keep all this stuff up and running. Simple.

So far, the above-mentioned members of OpenAV Cloud are committed to building open cloud APIs, collaborating on best practices, and contributing to a secure, interoperable framework for the benefit of their customers and the industry. They aren’t agreeing to share IP or patents or even feature-sets. They are simply agreeing that each feature should be manageable by those who manage (the IT, AV or Facility Manager) — to make everyone’s job easier, more secure, and above all — for the benefit of the customers. I hope that industry organizations like AVIXA and CEDIA will also join this great movement.

As I said up top, this was only our second AV Cloud Summit. But, wow, this is moving fast. And, if you missed any of this – and you care about the future of AV and how all this stuff can and will eventually be managed via a network, you should go watch it — it’s all here: https://lavnch.com/xyte_cloud_summit_2025/register/. It’s about an hour long and I think it’s worth doing before InfoComm next month in Orlando as that’s when all of us will have a lot more leverage to go booth-to-booth to encourage adoption of this framework.