Two decades of innovation at ISE - part 3: Systems integration adapts and matures

“We used to see huge analogue AV switchers and routers designed to facilitate this rapidly growing requirement for AV signal distribution agility,” says Dan Goldstein, Chief Marketing Officer, AVIXA. “Integrators would combine all these different boxes in ways they weren’t necessarily designed to do using lots of custom programming behind a black curtain before handing to the customer as the big reveal.”

Over the last decade, AV over IP has been a massive driver in enabling easier, more efficient integration with a surge in project scale and customisation. Digitisation has simplified cabling infrastructure. Goldstein says, “Devices can talk to each other. It’s much more plug and play with much less need for custom programming.”

The “mystique of AV” as Chris Mcintyre-Brown, Managing Director, Futuresource Consulting describes it, still exists but IT skills and IP networks have been the great leveller while enabling systems integration to scale.

“If you were a CEDIA dealer in the early 2000s you were wiring a loudspeaker or a large TV not a control room,” says Bob Snyder, industry consultant. “Now you’re an IT engineer and when you are an IT engineer then what is the difference between a large home and small company? And when you’re networking a small company, the next step is tackling a bigger one. It is all of a continuum.”

“Instead of tech being developed in corporate labs for big enterprise to then trickle down, consumers were increasingly the first to take technology into companies where the AV and IT team were tasked with integrating it”

Bob Snyder. industry consultant

The Invisible Computer author Donald Norman joined Apple in 1993 and saw his advice taken onboard by CEO Steve Jobs after he rejoined the company in 1997. The result, in collaboration with designer Jony Ive, were the iPhone (2008) and iPad (2010), which fuelled the rise of Bring Your Own Device.

“Instead of tech being developed in corporate labs for big enterprise to then trickle down, consumers were increasingly the first to take technology into companies where the AV and IT team were tasked with integrating it,” says Snyder.

This trend markedly accelerated during the pandemic where home working spaces routinely have to connect to the corporate office.

“Now, systems are running on digital networks using generic hardware,” says Peter Lloyd, industry consultant. “So today’s challenges are all about designing, managing and maintaining systems in a much wider context than the single room installation.”

Links to other building management systems are going to be increasingly important, he says.

“Faced with a more complex web of connections to AV inputs and organisation-wide facilities management needs, AV facilities management and client service will become even more necessary and profitable.”

At the height of the dotcom boom in 2001, computer expo CeBIT hosted more than 800,000 visitors. It closed its doors in 2018. By comparison, ISE has gone from strength to strength.

In fact, IT has come to AV. ISE is now an event where networking and infrastructure giants like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Netgear, Logitech and HP rub shoulders with traditional systems integrators.

“AV has survived because it is different to IT,” believes Goldstein. “IT is binary; you have access to this file or you do not. Whereas AV continues to be more of a right-brain activity. It is still more art than science in spite of digitisation. For that reason, AV has retained a discrete skillset.”

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