David J.
Danto
AV, Collaboration, IoT, Technology, UC and Video Industry Analyst
Director of Emerging
Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
(Read David’s Bio) (See David’s CV) (Read David’s Other Blogs & Articles)
A View From The Road Volume 13, Number
4
InfoComm 2019
……It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..
I’ve struggled coming up with how
to frame InfoComm 2019, now a week since its conclusion. Multiple aspects of this conference are in
transition, with some good results and some not so good results. It will be difficult to parse out and fairly
present the good and the bad, but I’m going to give it a shot.
Firstly, as in multiple conference
before, let me explain that I’ve divided the writing chores with Let’s Do
Video’s David Maldow. Personally, while
I (and many others) still consider me an industry analyst that strives for
impartiality, I am an employee of Poly (the new combination of Plantronics and
Polycom) so I will defer the booth visits and product announcements to him
(and count on him to cover our great announcements) and focus solely on the
themes and my observations of the conference.
There are quite a few to discuss.
· Partnerships: In a
trend that I’ve documented before, many manufacturers and service providers
have recognized that developing and selling their products and services as a
siloed offering will no longer fly in this industry. Partnership announcements were everywhere at
this conference, with collaboration hardware manufacturers boasting about the
ecosystems they are compatible with, audio firms adopting one or more of the
multiple audio over IP schemes, historically “audio” and historically “video”
firms bundling their offerings together, etc.
In the collaboration world there are now very few manufacturers that
think they can own the cloud/infrastructure and hardware pieces of a client’s
business – and the ones that still do are being recognized as dinosaurs. People want everything to “just work” and
these ‘bundled to work together’ solutions take the onus of achieving success
off of the integrator and place it onto these pre-tested combinations. Additionally, furniture manufacturers are
packaging their offerings with integrators and manufacturers to gain a foothold
in the space. There will only be more
and more of these partnerships coming to market in the future.
· Improving
AI: Many exhibitors showed improvements in how AI will support
meetings. Cameras that can now more
effectively track participants mean manual controls are really a thing of the
past. Microphones – whether called
“beamforming” or “tracking intelligence” – can now do a much better job of
following the audio sources within a meeting, and new and old algorithms for
blocking noise and extraneous content are readily available. The ‘meeting start’ process is the next
target everyone is apparently working on – but there were few new enhancements
in that area ready for this show.
· Evolution
not Revolution: There were a notable few new products and systems
at the conference this year – such as a new collaboration room planning
ecosystem from Stem and some nifty
advancements in BlueTooth for AV from Williams AV, but for the most part
exhibitors showed incremental enhancements to their products, not new
devices. There are a number of reasons
for this, most notably that InfoComm has lost the mantle of new product
announcements to other conferences. New
AV gear now tends to get introduced at the larger, international ISE show in
February, and new collaboration technology now tends to get introduced at
Enterprise Connect. This also leads to
the next observation.
· Significant
Transitioning and Challenges Underway with InfoComm Itself: The
conference and its organizers are in the middle of a number of transitions that
represent significant challenges for the future of the event:
o
Renaming /
Rebranding: The
organization that puts on InfoComm, which used to be called ICIA,
then InfoComm, rebranded themselves to AVIXA late in
2017. The name change (Audiovisual and
Integrated Experience Association) represented a change in focus for the group
– from a focus on technical standards and industry advocacy to a focus on the
“experience” of the industry’s work products.
This has had mixed results. Some
embrace the focus on user experience, as this is a trend for many
industries. Others lament that
“experience” is not objectively measurable, and merely distracts from the
urgent need for industry members to ramp-up their technical proficiency in a
rapidly changing world (where IT contractors are taking a lot of AV market
share, and traditional AV companies are closing or merging as the industry
shrinks.) I have very strong opinions on
this subject, but regardless of how I or others feel, any objective view of the
rebranding must conclude that it hasn’t gone smoothly. Many exhibitors hate the name and (correctly
or not) attach to it the blame for some of the other transitions I’ll detail below. AVIXA certainly
didn’t help their cause by taking to social media and practically begging
owners of InfoComm swag to “trade it in” for AVIXA
swag. Promotions usually give away or
have contests for branded items. Rarely
do organizations take the odd step of asking one to turn past branding in so
they can replace it with new.
o
Me Too: AVIXA has a
significant problem with diversity. While
they have recognized this and have actively taken steps to acknowledge and
correct the problem, it is difficult to separate the positive steps they have
taken (for example - creating a Diversity
Council with multiple public events) from the poor optics they have
continued to support. Some examples
include the Woman in AV Award that smacks of tokenism (when no women won any of
the other awards this year); one major exhibitor and some minor ones still
using female models to celebrate their brand and parties (which industry
participants are still debating); and some reports of
sexual harassment on the show floor and events. The short-sighted optics of this year’s
ribbon cutting certainly didn’t help very much either. The AV community wants real change towards equality,
not just acknowledgment and token solutions.
o
Changing
Nature of The Show and Industry: Overarching all of the other
issues is the simple fact that the industry and conference are changing. More end-users are attending the conference –
bringing a wonderful camaraderie and personality to the event, but one that is
concerning to some of the exhibitors.
Reported registration was up about a hundred people, but actual
attendance was not reported. (Other than
a handful of very popular booths, the attendance looked significantly lighter
to most people I spoke with. AVIXA could release the number of badges printed to resolve
the issue, but they haven’t to date.) The costs of exhibiting at the event are
already sky-high and going up, with a number of regular exhibitors taking
smaller space this year and even smaller space next year. Then there was the conference planning
itself. As opposed to years past, the
session content had little to no independent (outside of AVIXA)
review. (Some were good, some were
terrible – in one case with a panelist having to essentially take over the
moderation of the session.) Someone
thought it would be a good idea to put a DJ in the hallway, arguably adding
excitement, but making networking and conversations more difficult – the two
most important things that most people attend the show to do. Also, the Orange County Convention Center was
in the middle of a connectivity transition, resulting in poor WiFi and cellular
service for attendees and exhibitors.
Generally, the list of complaints I heard far outweighs the list of
compliments.
There really wasn’t a lot of the
biggest collaboration trend (Team Chat / Workflow Platforms) visible on the show
floor (other than my
discussion of it on Convention TV.) That was an interesting miss
considering the ~$20
Billion valuation of Slack on their first day of public trading – just a
week after InfoComm. Expect to see
more and more about workflows and Team Chat as the hype-cycle peaks within the
next year. This calendar year still has Zoomtopia, Collaboration Week Silicon Valley
and Microsoft Ignite on
it, so I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this topic this year.
Now onto David Maldow for the
product announcements and booth visits.
==================================================================================
Business
video solutions are hot right now. InfoComm is an enormous show, and the UCC section (which is where the video vendors were located)
is just one area of the gigantic show floor. However, this year for the first
time, it felt like UCC, and business video in
particular, was the belle of the ball. All of the
positive attention from the financial world, following the successful Zoom IPO,
certainly had something to do with it. Even more so is the simple fact that
today’s working teams are culturally ready to adopt video on a massive scale,
just as the industry has finally found an affordable, manageable model for
deploying enterprise video. The stars have aligned for business video.
AVER: Carl Harvell (Sr. Director of
Customer Success and Service), has been keeping busy since our recent podcast about the new AVer
CAM540. For the full scoop on AVer’s presence at
InfoComm please watch the video and
check out our article on their InfoComm partnership strategy.
BARCO: David Fitzgerald (VP Global Alliances), showed me the
latest iteration of the legendary ClickShare and the
award winning UniSee wall, but I may be most
impressed with their Overture solution. All this great AV equipment is only
useful if it can be properly maintained and managed, which is hard to do at
scale. The Overture solution not only allows support to dig down into specific
devices, but does so in a very cool and visually appealing way. I think IT/AV
staff won’t just appreciate how this helps them do their jobs, they will enjoy
using it.
BLUEJEANS: John Knightly (SVP Product and Solution Marketing), shared
the latest from BlueJeans, including adding Dolby
Audio and other advancements to their mobile app, as well as bringing Dolby
Audio, real time translation, and security enhancements to their Events
service. Watch their video for more.
BOSE: I’ve been prying to get Martin Bodley (Director, Emerging Business) to explain Bose’s
interest in the collaboration space ever since they acquired ZiipRoom in January. Well at InfoComm he and his team came
through in a big way. They had a lot to show me, and I can comfortably say that
their interest in the space is real, and their roadmap is far beyond the preliminary
blueprint stages. I can’t share anything (or should I say, any of the multiple
things), but I am going to have a lot to cover in the near future. One thing I
can talk about, although unrelated to meeting collaboration, is the set of Bose
Frames that Martin was kind enough to let me have. They look like Ray-Ran-ish sunglasses, but they work like bluetooth
headphones. They even have a mic. I was skeptical about the sound quality
before I tried them, as there is nothing in or covering your ears, but they
really sound amazing! No joke, this may be the future of glasses, and of
headphones.
CISCO: The big news from Cisco was happening across the country at their Cisco
Live event in San Diego. However, Cisco still had a large presence, and a busy
booth, at InfoComm. It was great to chat with the team about all the big Cisco Live announcements. I’m particularly interested in
learning more about the plans to bring Jabber and Webex
Meetings/Teams together. Cisco has two massive brands with huge user bases that
they don’t want to disturb, but they clearly have a desire to simplify their
partners’ and customers’ lives by bringing their technologies together.
CLEAR ONE: Jason Ambion (National Sales Director), and the ClearOne team has been busy. Their devices continue to
impress and win awards, as the need for high quality audio in meeting
rooms becomes more and more understood. They are also working on partnerships
with cloud vendors to make it easier for their customers to use the devices
they want, with the services they want.
DOLBY: Dolby has been very busy, and visible, in our space in the last few
years. Their partnership strategy in video started with BlueJeans,
then extended to Highfive, and at InfoComm they
announced a new partnership with GoToMeeting, which will put Dolby Audio into
millions of additional business worker ears this year. At LDV,
we have evaluated the BlueJeans Room Kit with Dolby Audio,
the Dolby Voice Room with Highfive,
and we recently presented a webinar on the Highfive/Dolby
solution. Jeff Smith (Director, Product Marketing), shares details on
Dolby’s strategy to bring their audio into enterprise meeting spaces. Here’s my interview with them.
GO TO MEETING: I had a great conversation with Jen
Mathews (PR manager), Mike Sharp (CPO), Paul Gentile
(Director of Product Marketing) of the GoTo (LogMein) team. GoTo gets what is
happening in our space and is stepping up to offer the new video meeting room
experience to their massive customer base. Their newly announced partnership
with Dolby is an ideal step in this direction. Dolby audio throughout the GoTo platform is obviously an experience boost. Perhaps
just as important, the Dolby Voice Room device running GoToMeeting, provides an
affordable, managable, and user friendly way to bring
the GoTo experience to the meeting room. The
discussion revealed a number of technologies and areas that GoTo
is working on that I would not have expected and look forward to covering as
they go public.
JABRA: When I met with Jabra at Enterprise Connect earlier in the year,
they had just acquired PanaCast. I have been a fan of
the PanaCast team and approach since day one, and I
was wondering what Jabra’s plans were. After meeting with Karl Bateson
and the Jabra team at Infocomm I am more than pleased
that they truly get the value of PanaCast, and
understand how it can make Jabra a player in the quickly expanding video meeting
kit space. While the details are still NDA, the pieces of the puzzle are pretty
easy to put together if you think about it. It says something about the growth
of the video market if we are attracting audio heavyweights like Jabra. One
thing I can say, when they are ready to announce their play, the PanaCast piece has the potential to make their offering
truly differentiated.
LIBERTY AV: I caught a very interesting demo
at this integrator’s booth. They have a service called Teleportivity, which uses video
in a unique and extremely powerful way. Enterprise organizations may have
thousands of pieces integrator installed equipment that may require tech
support. When something goes wrong, the process of getting the right support
can be frustrating. With Teleportivity, every piece
of equipment has a label with a QR code. If you point
your phone/tablet at the code, you get all the relevant info on the device, as
well as the option to get live tech support on video. You can literally show
the tech support person what you are looking at and having trouble with. The
cumulative time savings that this technology could achieve is massive. As
someone covering video technology for a long time, I absolutely love to see
people thinking outside the box, and finding new uses for video.
LENOVO: Lenovo showed off their new ThinkSmart Hub 500
for Microsoft Teams. It is a
purpose-built, all-in-one appliance that includes a rotating touchscreen that
facilitates one-touch join meetings.
Lenovo is one of a number of firms that are producing hardware solutions
to make Microsoft’s software collaboration platforms more functional and useful
in meeting rooms.
LOGITECH: When you chat with Simon Dudley (Head of Sales Enablement and Analyst
Relations), you don’t just get the latest from Logitech. You get a current
perspective on the industry from one of our best thought leaders. We start with
the Logitech Sync announcement. The fact that management of
massive deployments of Logitech devices through enterprise work spaces has
become an issue that needed to be resolved is what I call a great a problem to
have. Logitech Sync solves this problem simply and cleanly. Check out the video
for the rest of the Logitech announcements, and a great discussion. See the interview here.
MICROSOFT: I had a great chat with Kendra
Baker (Sr. Product Marketing Manager, MS Teams Devices), about today’s new
chat-driven work culture, and how Microsoft Teams is working to support it. At
Let’s Do Video, we see video as the top of the productivity pyramid as it is
the most effective way for remote workers to collaborate. However, the base of
the pyramid is now team chat. We use video, but we live in our team chat. There
is so much to be said about how team chat empowers remote (and non-remote
teams) in a way that makes work more manageable and even enjoyable. But the key
to my conversation with Kendra is that Microsoft clearly gets it. They are a
big company and can dabble in many things, but this is no dabble. I hope to
continue the conversation so I can share more with you about Microsoft’s plans
to get us all using MS Teams.
NUREVA: Every time I demo the Nureva Span Workspace on the Nureva Wall it has added functionality and an improved
workflow. Nureva is also constantly developing their
popular HDL300 audio solutions, adding new features like “Active Zone Control”
to further improve the meeting experience. While a visual canvas workspace
isn’t the right tool for every working team, it is the ideal workflow for
certain types of collaborators who are enjoying massive ROI from Nureva deployments.
PEXIP: The Pexip and Videxio combination is a match made in heaven (or Norway,
which is pretty close to heaven from what I hear). Rarely do two teams merge
into one so seamlessly, and hit the ground running so quickly. It was great to
see old friends from both organizations, wearing the new Pexip
colors, working together at the booth, at their analyst/partner breakfast, and
at their multiple parties (they know how to make the most out of InfoComm).
Jordan Owens (VP, Architecture), shares the details on the new Pexip on this video
interview, and the latest developments to their platform. Pexip stands out as really having no direct competitors
when it comes to the basic nature of their Infinity platform, despite being in
the middle of an increasingly crowded and competitive market.
POLY: The software revolution caused a massive sea change in the
videoconferencing industry. The largest ships had the hardest time turning with
the new current. Companies like Polycom had to decide what kind of company they
wanted to be in this new world. There were many questions regarding what
Polycom was going to do, what Polycom should do, and where it fit in this new
generation of business video. These questions have all finally been answered to
just about everyone’s satisfaction as Polycom and Plantronics formed the new
Poly Company. The Poly has pulled together a new exec team, with some very
familiar and reassuring faces, and they are focusing on what they do best.
There is a magic spot where we, as human beings, connect to the cloud services
that we love so much. We call this, “the endpoint”. Whether it be a
speakerphone, camera, all-in-one video room system, we need an endpoint to make
it all happen. Poly (both from the Plantronics and Polycom side) has always
created great endpoints, and the Polycom team has a historic understanding of
the enterprise video market. The new Polys’ roadmap, as explained in my video interview with David Danto (Director
of UC Strategy and Research), simply makes sense, and their latest products are
getting a lot of good buzz.
SENNHEISER: The word is out. “Good enough audio” is not good
enough for business. Superior audio provides great ROI by making working
sessions more productive, and less mentally straining. Companies with great
names in audio, like Sennheiser, are quickly
realizing that their products aren’t just needed for audiophiles and for high
end workspaces, but for every day working teams. Jim
Fairweather (VP Americas Sales & Marketing), shares in my video interview how Sennheiser is partnering with companies like Zoom and
Amazon to certify their products for their collaboration services to meet this
need.
STARIN: LDV
owes an enormous amount of thanks to the Starin team, and Chris Neto
in particular, for allowing us to record the videos embedded above at their
booth. Integrators and resellers have an important new role in our industry.
The gear is a lot easier to install and far more reliable than in the old days.
The need for integrators today is not so much to make sure the gear works, but
to help us understand how best to use the gear to support our workflows. By
helping give a voice to independent analysts like LDV,
Starin is furthering the discussion beyond the
typical financial analysis of industry vendors, and into the trends and
workplace realities that are driving the future of our industry.
STARLEAF: William
MacDonald (CTO), showed me the latest from StarLeaf,
including their new Pronto service for their meeting room systems. With Pronto,
you don’t have to schedule the room system, you can just invite yourself to the
meeting, walk into the meeting room, and put your phone down next to the StarLeaf system. The solution will connect wirelessly to
your phone, pull the meeting info, and let you click the touchpad to start the
meeting on the room system. You can also use the Pronto Cable to connect your
laptop which also will start your meeting from the touchpad, as well as let you
share content to the monitor. StarLeaf has a lot on
their roadmap, and continues to make headway with their Open Cloud offering, so
we will be sure to check in again with them soon.
STEM AUDIO: Jacob Marash (CEO and Founder),
is reinventing the way we do audio. We recently presented a webinar together, where we explain how
the new Stem Audio Ecosystem works. With Stem Audio, the devices themselves
(while cutting edge) are really secondary to the software that creates the
ecosystem. This unique software provides a visual interfaces which helps audio
installers do everything from designing the room, to choosing the devices, to
testing room coverage, to “tuning” the devices for best possible sound. It even
offers a touch interface to start your video call. I expect you will be hearing
a lot more about Stem Audio in the near future. Watch my video of our conversation here.
T1V: I caught a great demo at the T1V booth of their ThinkHub solution. I love the idea of a virtual workspace
(or canvas), that any worker can contribute to regardless of location. T1V has
a number of differentiators, but I was particularly impressed by the variety of
content they can support on the workspace. Rather than just supporting the
ability to share files, team members can share their entire laptop as a content
item up on the big screen. The ability to work with our devices, and not merely
share files with our devices, brings a whole new level of applications to the
virtual workspace concept.
VDO360: Dan
Freeman (CEO), is always working on the next thing. Dan demoed several
cameras, including their new Compass PTZ with 10x
optical zoom and 10x digital zoom. At full zoom it was picking up the smallest
details from across the convention hall. He also showed me the new Navigator
Auto Tracking Camera. Auto tracking is incredibly popular now, and this is a
very affordable approach. It uses audio to track the active speaker, and worked
surprisingly well with all the background noise at the show. Dan had several
NDA projects to share with me as well, so be sure to check back later in the
year for the next big thing from VDO360.
YAMAHA: Meghan
Kennelly (Manager of Global Marketing & Communications) showed me the
newest Yamaha meeting room solution. Based off customer feedback from their CS-700
Video Sound Bar, they created a new version designed for bigger spaces with
a separate camera (the Huddly) for placement above a
monitor. The new ESB-1080 Enterprise Sound Bar has enough audio muscle for
bigger spaces, while keeping the popular speakerbar form factor.
ZOOM: Zoom is the center of the business video universe. The first words out
of almost any collaboration hardware vendor’s lips at InfoComm, was about how
they are working with Zoom. The Zoom logo was in countless booths. Zoom’s
success is so unprecedented that it has changed the competitive stance of many
of our industry leaders. Previously, we had a limited market, and the big video
vendors were fighting over the same Fortune 50 fish. Zoom’s amazing success, and
unbelievable reception from Wall Street, has validated a massive expansion of
our entire industry. In other words, Zoom is doing so well that they are
actually helping their competitors by redefining the market. Everyone is more
interested in finding new customers than poaching competitor accounts.
Esther Yoon (Product Marketing Manager,
Conference Room Solutions), shared the latest features and announcements on
collaborative tools and in-room intelligence in our video chat here, but what is more
notable in the video is her constant focus on the user experience and user
happiness.
The Zoom near obsession with happiness is not just a
marketing gimmick. I’ve spoken to some rather large Zoom accounts and they
haven’t all chosen Zoom based on features and price alone. The Zoom culture,
responsiveness to customer requests, and feeling of real partnership is as much
a part of their success as their leading platform. To get a real sense of what
makes Zoom so unique, you must go to Zoomtopia this October. This will be my third
year covering the event and it is always a great learning/networking
experience, and a lot of fun.
==================================================================================
That’s it for this edition of A
View From The Road.
Look for the next one in early November, after Zoomtopia and Collaboration Week Silicon Valley.
==================================================================================
This
article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David
has over three decades of experience providing problem solving leadership and
innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various firms
in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T,
Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He
is the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology and Poly’s Director of
UC Strategy and Research. David can be reached at DDanto@imcca.org and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be
seen at Danto.info.
All images and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.