First AV Cloud Summit Highlights the Future of AV Management with a Unified Cloud Platform

Industry leaders across the value chain gathered at the first AV Cloud Summit to share insights on leveraging cloud platforms to streamline operations and improve efficiency

Mountain View, California – November 20, 2024 – Xyte, developer of the first all-in-one cloud platform for device manufacturers and system integrators, hosted the inaugural AV Cloud Summit, featuring a panel of industry leaders throughout the entire value chain, including Pam Hoppel, president of LegrandAV; Scott Walker, president of Waveguide; Eric Snider, CTO of CTI; and Ron Sklaver, global lead for In-Office Meeting Experience at EY. In addition, top AV companies such as AtlasIED, Planar, Legrand AV, Symetrix, IMSTS and others presented their cloud implementations. The Summit’s discussions stressed the importance of a unified, interoperable cloud platform to address the complexities of AV system management and monitoring, and meet increasing end-user expectations of simplicity and efficiency.

The AV Cloud Summit highlighted that cloud integration in AV is more than just device connectivity – it’s about effective, seamless, centralized and efficient management. As the industry moves toward remote monitoring capabilities, the Summit uncovered a major challenge: the fragmentation of cloud management systems. AV devices are often monitored in a decentralized manner, creating a significant overhead for IT/AV managers in assuring continuous operation and a seamless user experience.

Legrand AV President Pam Hoppel spoke about adopting cloud solutions, emphasizing cloud technology as an opportunity for manufacturers to improve offerings, enhance device management, and align with industry requirements like heightened security. When answering why Legrand chose to use Xyte, an external platform, instead of developing their cloud internally, Pam said “That's not my core capability. I want to really stick and focus in the manufacturing space where I can excel in where my engineering talent is and then leverage partners. And if I think about where the technology is going on the evolution, partnerships inevitably are going to have to expand.”

Meanwhile, Eric Snider of CTI highlighted the industry's pressing need for a platform that integrates data from various systems into a unified, compatible, and customizable interface.

Scott Walker of Waveguide and Ron Sklaver from EY shared insights from the design and end-user perspectives. Walker emphasized simplicity and security, envisioning a future where AV systems proactively communicate status changes to other systems. For example, a room-booking system adjusting availability if AV equipment fails. Sklaver noted that AV is increasingly seen as an IT function, requiring alignment with IT standards and security.

Sklaver highlighted the value of a unified cloud platform in enabling efficient system health monitoring and uptime, stating, “What I really want to know is heartbeat monitoring. It is that simple when you're talking about this kind of scale - just tell me if it's down. If I can reboot it remotely - fabulous. But if not, let me know.”

Sklaver also emphasized the importance of one layer to manage all the different platforms: “If I have no choice but to have multiple platforms, then what I really want is some layer across the top that lets me tie it all together. Don't make me train everyone how to use six or seven or eight different platforms. Give me one that can lay across the top. If I could have one feature today, I'd ask for a standard way for every manufacturer to say - OK, here’s how you can simply have my heartbeat.”

Industry-leading companies like AtlasIED, Planar, Symetrix and WyreStorm demonstrated advanced features in their cloud implementations, such as e-store for license enablement and advanced features, secure tunnels, and more. AtlasIED's Atmosphere Cloud, for instance, uses secure tunneling to allow real-time remote system adjustments, reducing operational costs and improving response times. Symetrix showcased cloud licensing as a means to provide product flexibility, where customers can instantly activate new features through software licenses rather than physical upgrades.

Andrew Gross compared what Xyte is doing to the ProAV industry to Tesla: “When we talk about dashboarding and a legacy hardware space, the automobile industry comes up immediately, they took a legacy industry and turned it on its head through a software defined experience. What they did is less turnover, higher customer retention and now some of the greatest sustainability metrics. Outside of Tesla. The highest customer retention rate in the auto industry is Toyota. It's a 50% customer retention rate. Tesla's is 90.”

The AV Cloud Summit called for collaboration among manufacturers, integrators and industry stakeholders to establish open standards, crucial for accelerating cloud integration in AV, and for allowing an improved user experience that increases efficiency and simplicity.
Xyte will host another industry event on May 7th, looking at additional industry cloud trends and cloud use cases.

To watch the inaugural AV Cloud Summit on demand, click here.