As places of work continue to extend beyond the boundaries of the office workspace, meeting rooms increase in number and more AV devices become networked, companies are looking for ways to organise and evaluate AV installations. At the same time, AV vendors and integrators are exploring options for adding value beyond hardware provision, building new revenue streams in the process. In light of these movements, a new market report from Futuresource Consulting evaluates the rising opportunities for AVMS (AV Managed Services).
Drive for Data, Measurement and Control in Meeting Room
“It’s no secret that there’s been an acceleration of digital connectivity and cloud solutions over recent years,” says Jeremy Wills, Senior Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “AV over IP has flourished; remote monitoring and management of systems has become economically viable and CAPEX spend is under the microscope. Combine that with the Coronavirus effect and social distancing, which has accelerated the general uptake of video communications, and companies are eager to get a firmer handle on how much value they are getting from their meeting room technology. This includes everything from understanding value and benefits, productivity, downtime, and the availability of systems in their digital environment. AVMS can solve these problems and more, with remote control, monitoring and management that allows diagnostics, updates and fault rectification, proactive maintenance and better system performance.”
The new Futuresource report is underpinned by discussions with more than 30 of the largest integrators in the US and Europe, alongside interviews with AVMS platform vendors and 500 AV and IT managers in large corporates. Futuresource found that, to date, most of the interest and activity has been focused on meeting rooms and the AV equipment installed in them. However, attention is slowly turning to huddle spaces, receptions, foyers and other open spaces. This extends the scope of the opportunity, adding to the 42 million meeting rooms that Futuresource estimates are currently operational in corporates worldwide.
Open Source Offerings Expand the AVMS Market
AVMS platform solutions are either closed or semi-open systems, from vendors like AMX, Crestron and Extron, or Cloud-based open API solutions from brands such as AVI-SPL, Barco and Utelogy, that can be used to control a range of solutions from different vendors.
“AVMS is a market poised on the threshold of growth, as we’ve seen with IT Managed Services. We expect global AVMS combined platform and services value to soar by 550% from 2019 to 2024,” says Wills. “AVMS has already attracted the attention of more diversified platform vendors like Ricoh and Sony. Microsoft is also due to enter the market later in 2020 and watch out for Xerox making noises in the future. We are still a year or so away from an accelerated migration, so there’s a big opportunity for the right integrator to step up and develop a game-changing solution. There are so many companies who have the potential to cause a paradigm shift.”
Smart Building Technology and AVMS Crossover
“Once AVMS becomes more established, the opportunities for crossover will begin to come into play. The control and automation functionality already being incorporated into some of the AVMS platforms means they could dovetail into facilities management and smart building technologies. With the right approach, we could see a landgrab for sensor, lighting and environmental control capabilities, as smart building management implementations become a mainstream proposition.” Futuresource covers this in its latest Tech Perspectives Report on Smart Buildings.
