What's your vision for the future of AV? That's the question we asked Richard Jonker, VP Business Development at NETGEAR. Here are his predictions on broadcast-quality expectations, data-driven decision-making, and why collaboration will separate winners from losers.
IN THIS ARTICLE
The AV industry stands at a pivotal moment. The next few years will mark a decisive shift from isolated, hardware-focused room systems to organization-wide digital experience platforms. The distinction matters. A meeting room is no longer just a box with equipment. It has become a digital experience platform, an infrastructure that scales across portfolios, integrates with enterprise IT systems, and continuously improves through software updates.
Organizations increasingly expect their AV infrastructure to support hybrid communication, intelligent signage, live production, workplace analytics, and capabilities we haven’t even imagined yet. They should all be capable of running on shared platforms with consistent management, unified security, and measurable business outcomes.
I have watched this pattern across multiple technology sectors: telephony moving to VoIP, storage migrating to the cloud, and security surveillance systems going IP-native. The organizations that embrace transformation early create compounding competitive advantages. Those who resist eventually face existential pressure. AV is at precisely this inflexion point right now.
Broadcast-quality expectations are extending across all verticals. Corporations want town halls that look like network productions. Universities design classrooms as content studios. Retail environments, drive-throughs, and transportation hubs all expect dynamic, centrally managed signage networks rivalling Times Square. The elevation of expectations means that “good enough” no longer exists as a category.
Displays are becoming architectural elements. LED walls everywhere, e-paper in transit signage, ultra-wide canvases in conference rooms. Designs that seemed impossible or too expensive five years ago are becoming standard specifications.
Customers demand systems that scale easily, deploy consistently, and can be monitored remotely. They’re outcome-focused after the COVID improvisation years. They want reliability, consistency, and measurable business value.
The most exciting shift is AV systems delivering intelligence alongside content. For decades, systems transported video from point A to point B. Now they optimize themselves based on actual usage patterns, self-diagnose issues before users notice, and generate actionable insights, like meeting room usage stats.
When you can demonstrate that specific AV investments improved meeting effectiveness by measurable percentages, or that room redesigns increased utilization by documented amounts, you demonstrate real business impact. That is a fundamentally different conversation, with a wider representation of leadership, from CEO to CFO and CIO to CHRO, each with their own specific interest.
This data-driven approach is separating industry leaders from laggards.
If there’s one trend to prioritize immediately, it’s the convergence of AV, IT, and broadcast workflows into a unified, software-defined media infrastructure.
This shift is foundational because every other major trend depends on it. AI requires reliable transport and consistent data collection. Analytics need standardized, 100% connected platforms. Hybrid work demands seamless integration. LED expansion requires massive bandwidth and low latency. Global standardization requires platforms that work identically everywhere.
You can’t bolt these capabilities onto fragmented, hardware-centric systems. They must be architectural from the beginning.
This convergence doesn’t mean AV integrators must become network engineers. It means integrators, as owners of user experience, should align with teams bringing infrastructure expertise. Modern AV+IT specialists ensure systems are interoperable, stable, and future-ready, while integrators focus on design and customer strategy that set them apart.
Rather than acquiring deep networking certifications, integrators should develop strategic fluency: understanding how AV interacts with IT, cloud workflows, content production, and enterprise operations at a level enabling intelligent conversations and informed decisions.
The most competitive integrators will know when to bring in AV-savvy IT partners early and how to collaborate effectively throughout project lifecycles. The future skillset blends design excellence, workflow understanding, creative problem-solving, and customer advisory capabilities. These skills won’t become obsolete. They are becoming more valuable as technical infrastructure becomes standardized.
Integrators pairing AV strengths with specialized AV-over-IP, cloud-management, security, and network expertise will move faster and deliver solutions that remain effective for years. Enterprises treating AV as connected digital infrastructure will meet user expectations and attract talent more effectively. As IT consolidation taught us over 30 years: get big, get niche, or get out. AV is following the same path.
AV is increasingly resembling the rest of the familiar enterprise technology stack: IP-native, cloud-connected, standardized, software-defined, and capable of scaling across portfolios. The transformation accelerated out of necessity as hybrid work requirements drove rapid adoption, but the underlying trend was already clear. Organizations are asking for environments that support multiple use cases on shared infrastructure, expect consistent experiences everywhere, demand central management, and deliver measurable outcomes.
For integrators, this creates opportunities to build systems that work everywhere, not just in single locations. The key is recognizing what to master internally and what to access through strategic partnerships.
The technology is ready.
Richard Jonker brings decades of experience in enterprise technology, networking, and AV convergence. His work focuses on helping organizations navigate the transformation from traditional AV deployments to IP- and software-defined, connected digital experience platforms.
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