ISE 2025 was filled with the potential of an upcoming AV Cloud onslaught. Big brands such as Legrand AV, Crestron, QSC, Shure, BrightSign, Philips, Sennheiser, and Microsoft each had cloud-related pre-show announcements and were pitching their versions of managing products via the cloud. The show was simply too big to walk in four days, but in Halls 3, 4 and 5 alone, I counted 38 manufacturers with cloud-related pitches.

Google even showed a finished version of its Starline — a 3D-ish, holographic-like videoconferencing product — and emphatically announced it would be cloud-based at $400 per month, per room. HP will sell it, and here are all the details!

So far, Xyte is still the only cloud-only company aimed at AV and UCC. And, the company used ISE 2025 to launch something dubbed Connect+, designed to help manufacturers, distributors, integrators and users adopt the AV Cloud via a “single pane of glass” to manage AV, UCC and IT devices, rooms and spaces remotely.

Connect+ was demoed in the Xyte booth, and my team at rAVe [PUBS] shot a video of it, which you can watch here:

At ISE, Xyte also announced new capabilities, including support and partnerships with Neat, Domotz, Poly, Biamp and others. This follows a 2024 that saw adoption of Xyte by big brands such as Legrand AV, Bluesound, WyreStorm, Bose Professional, Avocor, Symetrix, Planar, AtlasIED and a host of others.

Still, a lot of integrators I spoke to aren’t sure where to start — and this confusion even came from account reps at big integrators — including one that, ironically, has its own cloud system, interestingly enough. When I went to Xyte, it was clear the company is trying to jump-start integrators by offering new pricing tiers and onboarding at no cost through 2025. Details on the latter are here.

The path before us feels clear and obvious, thanks to history. In the IT and computer software worlds, conservative resellers went out of business with the rise of SaaS. Those that survived and now thrive became managed service providers to enterprises, universities, and even the government. Yes, they still sell hardware, but they make much more money selling these services. End users embrace this approach because managing AV, UCC, digital signage, and IT gear (and rooms) from one UI is more appealing — not to mention easier and more affordable than sending techs from room to room.

While at ISE, Andrew Gross from Xyte explained to me that the company recently released license provisioning directly through the platform; this is really cool as it simplifies the process of bundling equipment and licenses.

For asset management, Xyte also launched a feature enabling customers to add non-connected “items” to spaces or rooms. A “non-connected item” is any device, hardware or physical component that’s part of an AV system but not connected to the network — meaning it doesn’t send any data (e.g., DVD players, handheld mics, speakers). This feature allows clients to track operational status (whether it’s on and working), purchase date, warranties, equipment refreshes, service contracts and more.

I’ll likely write a lot more about the AV Cloud in 2025 as it’s a trend we all need to embrace as clients want more AV via OpEx rather than CapEx. And, in case you haven’t seen it already, we hosted a Cloud AV Summit in December 2024 — you can watch it here! Guests included the new president of Legrand AV, Pam Hoppel; Scott Walker of Waveguide fame; Eric Snider, the CTO of CTI; and Ron Sklaver, the global lead of in-office meeting experiences at EY. I’m not sure you could get a bigger endorser of the cloud than Ron at EY.