ISE 2026 was breathtaking. Over 92,000 unique attendees, 1,751 exhibitors, and an energy across the show floor that will keep us going for months. At least 228 partner booths displayed ‘Powered by NETGEAR AV’ signs, a visible signal of how far the AV-over-IP ecosystem has grown.
IN THIS ARTICLE
We launched three new products, won five awards for our newly launched Engage 2.4 and M4350-series managed switches, and exceeded our own expectations. But the real story isn’t what any single vendor did. It is what is happening to the industry.
Beneath the product launches and booth demos, something bigger was happening. Richard Jonker, VP, Commercial Business Development for NETGEAR Enterprise, spent the week speaking with CTOs, integrators, and manufacturing partners across the show floor.
AV strategy is now rooted in the network. Connected venues, hybrid workplaces, enterprise broadcast, and campus-scale AV over IP all assume deterministic, secure switching as baseline infrastructure.
The myth of a fully converged network is broken. Innovations from Crestron, Yealink, HP-Poly, Pleneo, and Logitech confirm it: you need a separate AV network alongside corporate IT. Our newly announced Microsoft MDEP collaboration underlines our role in securing the AV network.
Interoperability is improving. IP-based media standards are aligning. Multi-vendor ecosystems work. The problem is operational now, not technical. Too many solutions still require specialist expertise and manual intervention. As AV over IP scales, buyers will choose platforms that simplify deployment and change management over ones that don’t.
AI is now embedded across AV workflows. In aligned environments, it improves efficiency. In fragmented ones, it accelerates problems.
Enterprises value AI-ready design with clear ownership, governance, and lifecycle control more than AI-enabled features. Keep an eye out for what’s happening at XTEN-AV, Xyte, Utelogy, Providius, Audinate’s Iris, and NetSpeek.
Now that and AI features have become table stakes, lifecycle-driven architectures and platforms that deliver consistent results across sites and regions are what create competitive advantage. CTO conversations have evolved from switch features to deployment economics.
Digital Darwinism occurs when technology and society evolve faster than people or organisations can keep up – and that’s exactly what is happening today, only at an even faster pace. As technological capability accelerates beyond what operating models and ecosystems can absorb, those building technology need to stay ahead of that curve so that when enterprises are ready to adopt it, it’s ready for them to use. The industry has shifted from demonstrating that AV over IP works to demonstrating that it can be operated reliably at scale. This fundamentally different challenge will be met by those who offer breadth, simplicity and alignment over isolated innovation.
Learn more about our new products in this blog or in this webinar with John Henkel and Laurent Masia.
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