The rise of hybrid work, fragmented teams, the gig economy, and global markets brought an intense focus on enabling robust collaboration to drive innovation. Organizations leveraged digital solutions enabled by technologies such as the cloud to build resilience and improve business performance. Soon enough, advanced audio-video solutions became a part of the organizational toolkit. Today, these solutions are helping organizations drive innovation, collaboration, and communication.
Enterprise cloud adoption has been on a massive upswing as organizations realize the benefits of scalability, elasticity, and greater cost efficiencies. With the cloud becoming the enabler of business continuity, it is hardly a surprise to see this market poised to grow to US$ 1630 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of 17.32% from 2022 to 2030.
As the cloud becomes a prominent and essential technology in the organizational tech landscape, AV solutions too look towards the power of the cloud.
The AV industry had been on the road to becoming more IT-centric over the past few years. As enterprise IT moves towards the cloud, AV solutions too gravitate towards cloud power.
UCaaS advantage
Bringing AV to the cloud presents multiple opportunities for the entire organization. Anytime, anywhere access, reduced complexity, and greater cost savings are some of the clear wins. Most organizations today want to control their conferencing costs while also unifying communications to integrate everything from remote offices to mobile and remote workers as a cohesive unit.
The cloud is helping organizations integrate diverse communication tools and applications, be it video conferencing, screen sharing, email, or instant messaging. UCaaS communications are bolstering AV investments and helping organizations reduce costs while improving engagement. The cloud makes it possible to tie everything in the AV and communication segment to connect easily and seamlessly while remaining manageable and scalable.
New business models
As organizations work on phasing out whatever on-premise solutions they have left owing to the flexibility and scalability aspects of cloud-based provision, everything is moving towards an “As-a-Service” future. AV solution providers are now harnessing the power of the cloud to enable the AVaaS model.
AVaaS or Audio-Visual-as-a-Service is a model that allows organizations to leverage modern and cutting-edge AV solutions without the heavy upfront investments. It allows organizations of all sizes to fit AV into their budget without worrying about heavy capital expenses.
This model gives enterprises the flexibility to use cutting-edge, modern-day AV solutions and enjoy a subscription model while gaining better control over their AV costs.
Duplicating and scaling AV implementations across meeting spaces and buildings, improving the capability to manage the maintenance and support needs of AV investments and access to the latest AV technology are some of the advantages of the cloud model.
Improved and instant collaboration
The cloud is also powering up AV solutions to deliver improved and instant collaboration experiences. Advanced communication platforms driven by the cloud are helping organizations work seamlessly and collaborate remotely while also streamlining workflows, onboarding employees, storing and sharing files, and hosting online events!
Tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom Rooms, Microsoft Surface Hub, etc. are using the cloud and making collaboration effortless. Sharing heavy files, accessing transcripts, routing, and queueing calls are becoming possible with the cloud.
Technologies such as Zoom Rooms and Teams Rooms are using the capabilities powered by the cloud to turn any meeting space into an easy-to-use and inclusive collaboration space.
Deliver new-age workspaces
The world of work is now a hybrid hub characterized by fewer people and more physical distancing. Office spaces have had to undergo a massive makeover. Here advanced AV solutions are emerging as the backbone supporting the unit. The cloud is powering this massive makeover as well.
Organizations can now leverage powerful cloud-based video communications platforms to drive the modern-day workplace. Platforms, empowered with superior support options such as the Surge+ Jump, allow organizations to create welcome spaces, provide assistance and enable instant presence across locations as if physically present.
The cloud has also become the enabler of touchless AV tech and powers contactless and jump screen technology. Touchless tech can be used to meet, greet, and guide those visiting the office premises, and provide instant assistance along with the best information to navigate these spaces.
Integrated displays, microphones, sensors, and sound systems are also becoming a part of digital strategies. Many IoT devices feature AV functionality as well. Most of these devices now have to move closer to the edge of the network as Network-connected AV edge devices emerge as important sources of data that can be aggregated in cloud applications to support AI, ML, and BI applications (Big Data). Virtualized and cloud-based solutions could upend traditional AV system provisioning, monitoring, and management and control methodologies. With the power of the cloud, AV solution providers can deliver a whole new world of connected, intelligent, and automated services.
The AV industry is excited about the cloud since the cloud gives them an infrastructure that allows them to grow as customer needs grow. They can scale, manage, provision, deploy and monitor different AV systems using a single centralized system while eliminating the need to bring in new infrastructure. The cloud also makes it easier to deliver firmware and software updates.
As collaboration and connection become strategic enterprise business drivers, AV solution providers are looking at the cloud to deliver transformational AV experiences. This becomes even more essential since remote operations need greater connection. It will be interesting to see how the cloud goes on to further shape and drive innovation in the AV industry.
