Integration Everywhere
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM,
By Michael Goldman
As I depart NAB and prepare for InfoComm, it’s hard not to notice the depth to which the integration theme has infiltrated not only the installation world, but all its sister industries as well. The word and its meaning are everywhere these days. Not only are AV and IT generally moving steadily together, but companies are integrating product lines and moving core technologies from one market to another — sometimes with startling speed.
At NAB, for instance, Harris was largely there to tout its numerous broadcast solutions. Yet executives at the company also clued me in about their work currently underway to link the company’s broadcast content-management technologies together with its growing digital-signage initiatives. The company is trying hard to port broadcast tools into an entirely new out-of-home market digital-signage solution that could eventually be implemented by businesses, municipal governments, and broadcasters themselves to communicate news, advertising, entertainment, and emergency information to local communities far beyond traditional broadcast channels.
I fully anticipate seeing such themes and initiatives all over the landscape when I get to InfoComm — particularly where the issue of controlling such systems is concerned. In this issue’s InfoComm preview on p. 30, for example, Trevor Boyer points out, among other trends, the movement of traditional IT integrators into the world of digital signage specifically. In his column on p. 26, Dan Daley emphasizes that the broadcast issue of white spaces has become a global-warming-sized problem in the systems integration world.
So it’s no wonder that Sound & Video Contractor is responding to these shifting paradigms, changing markets, and converging technological developments, but in a logical way. Obviously, we’ll remain the leading technical resource in this market — that will not change. Starting next month, what you will see is our print magazine packaged in a more attractive, easier-to-read design, as well as the debut of a new online product that perfectly reflects the convergence of the IT world with the AV world — designed to help you navigate this transition.
These additions are essentially an upgrade strategically designed to help you maximize current revenue opportunities, find new ones, and learn from one another in a seamless, more organic way. More on our new moves next issue.
