Commercial Integrator November 2021 - 35

to last two or three years, after which the
customer can opt to upgrade to all new
equipment and solutions, Simopoulos says.
With a service-based offering, one of the
most important things is developing the
resources to support those offerings, says
Chris Gazdic, global director and AVaaS
product executive at WESCO Distribution.
" When you start talking about including
this, it's having staff to be able to support it
and having a call center enabled to be part
of that package, " Gazdic said.
However, many of these services are deAt
P2P there was a big emphasis placed on
bringing the AV industry in line with the IT
industry and adopting modern IT technologies.
ployed and managed via the cloud, which
requires a level of IT knowledge not often
found in pro AV.
When Andrew Pelletier, vice president
of operations at SIGNET asked the session
attendees how many of them employ a chief
technical officer, very few hands were raised.
" If you're going to play in that space and
are undoubtedly set to be adopted by
organizations of all sizes as they deal with
an increasing rate of cyberattacks.
" The IT departments are having to deal
with this now, and there's no doubt in my
mind that you guys as integrators who are
selling products, selling rooms, selling
digital signage or whatever it may be ... are
going to have to deal with that, " Fowler says.
This presents a challenge to most
integration firms, but it also presents an
opportunity, Fowler says.
" I don't know a lot of integrators that
have chief security officers or chief information
security officers, " says Fowler. " You
may want to start thinking about that and
start understanding the regulations that are
going on. "
AV-As-A-Service Requires
IT Knowledge
If AV integrators are to truly adopt an
as-a-service model and become a part of
the gig economy, they have to speak the
same language as their customers and the
IT professionals they often interface with,
according to a panel of industry experts.
The session, " Networked Solutions that
Differentiate & Drive Revenue, " dove into
the importance of the integration community
to shift to a service-based cloud
subscription model designed to make
commercialintegrator.com
technology more affordable for customers
and provide a constant flow of revenue.
According to moderator Rob Simopoulos
co-founder of cybersecurity firm Defendify,
a former AV professional and NSCA
board member, most technologies being
purchased by an organization's IT department
are subscription based. He cited
Microsoft 365, Apple systems and more.
" You're going to see a
lot of buildings operate
... as they do at home. "
- Maureen Pajerski,
Chief Operating Officer,
Intellisee
" There's no doubt that the CIO and director
of IT are buying a lot of their systems
and software in a recurring revenue, subscription
model, " he said. " The opportunities
are surely there. "
Managed service providers in the IT
space have been operating under that
model for a long time, offering clients computers,
servers, proactive monitoring and
more in a monthly subscription designed
have that offering, you need to talk the talk
and walk the walk, " Pelletier says. " It's not
good enough to just have some level of
understanding - you need to have a much
deeper understanding. "
Echoing comments from industry
experts across several sessions at Pivot
to Profit, Frank West, vice president of
systems sales for the Americas at QSC, said
the AV industry needs to become as standard
IT and mainstream as possible to help
move the industry towards service-based
offerings and keep up with other tech
disciplines.
" We're seeing that on the networking side
and also on some of the programming side,
using common languages that kids are learning
in university today as opposed to the
least useful Latin AV languages we've been
stuck with the last 20 years, " West says.
How You Can Improve
Your Contracts
Risk is inherent in the business world, and the
integration community is no different - especially
for larger projects. That's why it's critical
that integrators make sure project contracts
are as favorable to them as possible.
However, there are some common
mistakes integrators make when drawing
up these contracts, according to a panel of
lawyers at Pivot to Profit.
The session, called " Big Projects, Good
NOVEMBER 2021 Commercial Integrator 35
COURTESY NSCA
http://www.commercialintegrator.com
Commercial Integrator November 2021

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