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Customer Portal
InfoComm ’25 – A Software View
June 9, 2025
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Welcome to the June AV MSP newsletter!  We’re almost halfway through the year, but nobody really knows what that means.

A few upcoming AV MSP Things:

The Main Story

The main story is about software. We’re going to cover this in the context of InfoComm – this is our software guide to going to the show. If you want tips for the show, here’s my favorite one: the CVS on International Blvd just north of the convention center is open 7AM to midnight. It’s one of the only stores in the area that is priced reasonably and a good place to get snacks, drinks, and other things you need while attending the show. Get your granola bars and Arizona Iced tea, then head to the show floor!

All About Software

Software has been an integral part of the AV industry for decades. It was mostly used for programming, configuration, and management of systems in the beginning; it lived on a computer or laptop and was used on-demand. In the early 2000s, Crestron launched RoomView, a platform that allowed customers to monitor and managed their Crestron estates and anything that could provide feedback via programmed modules in the code. It evolved into RoomView Server in 2008 and is now called Fusion.

This represented a big step forward in coming up to speed as an industry to things the IT industry was doing. Server-based software meant it could be viewed by multiple people and provide remote monitoring and management of devices, like the modern RMMs used by the ITSM industry.

Software Today

A few things happened at once in the last couple of years to change the software landscape of our industry:

  • Managed services became a big topic of discussion. A huge part of this new way of providing service requires remote monitoring and management of devices, reducing on-site presence when possible.
  • AV started to be built on common operating systems. Android and Windows devices are commonplace and represent significant risk if poorly managed.
  • Software can now efficiently do things that previously required costly, specialized hardware. Audio DSPs are on Intel processors, video codecs run on Windows, Android, and MacOS, and video transport can be done with things like NDI.
  • API control has become far more common and it’s becoming unacceptable to not have that interface available.

All of this means we need software for updates, monitoring, management, security, and providing useful data.

The Software to Watch

Here’s our list of software to watch at InfoComm (organized by booth number, so this is a random list and is not an endorsement):

Pepperdash Portal (Booth 2846) – A long time heavyweight in AV programming, Pepperdash has brought a new view to the software they write with Portal. It promises to be a tool for MSPs to monitor and manage customer estates remotely, which is sorely lacking in the AV world. We’d like to see this software field tested for a bit, but there is a lot of potential in what we’ve seen so far. https://pepperdash.com/

Logitech Sync (Booth 3012) – Sync is specifically for Logitech devices and the company had made a hard push to make sure everything in your AV room from cameras to environmental sensors. If you’re all-in on Logitech, this is important software. The free tier is useful with the paid tier being a bit expensive for our taste but could be a fit for some customers. The other thing to note is that with Logitech’s huge presence in the technological world overall, they could quickly push this product to go beyond just their products. https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-collaboration/products/sync.html

Liberty CX (Booth 3107) – While Liberty is typically associated with hardware, they’ve taken some great strides in recent years to provide monitoring and management for those devices. CX is still growing and changing, but it’s worth a look if you’re checking out MSP-style SaaS products. https://www.cxunify.com/

XYTE (Booth 3153) – This company has pushed for APIs from manufacturers for years and we appreciate that effort. Their product has monitoring, ticketing, e-commerce – a bit of everything in there. https://www.xyte.io/

Utelogy (Booth 3275) – Utelogy has been a part of the industry for a long, long time. Their work has always been impressive and when it comes to collecting data, nobody collects more than Utelogy. There is a bit of control and a lot of monitoring with this software. https://www.utelogy.com/

Snap One OVRC (3728) – Connecting their Wattbox and security product lines, OVRC can be a simple way to track all network connected devices and reboot them when needed. The platform is simple, but it has potential to be a good first step into basic monitoring and remote troubleshooting. https://www.snapav.com/shop/en/snapav/search/ovrc-products

Q-SYS Reflect (Booth 4101) – hot off being acquired by an IoT giant, QSC has put significant development into their software platform. Whether it can be a one-size-fits-all for the industry remains to be seen, but it’s still a solid tool for QSC owners, even at the free tier. Kudos for providing SSO on the free tier! https://www.qsys.com/products/q-sys/monitoring-management/q-sys-reflect/

Domotz (Booth 5575) – A network device monitoring platform that takes a lot of the work out of configuration. This ties in nicely with most ticketing platforms, allows SNMP monitoring, and remote connectivity with minimal effort. Zabbix is a similar product but requires a steeper learning curve and self-hosting. https://www.domotz.com/

VisibilityOne/FlareKite (No Booth) – Full disclosure, we’re a FlareKite dealer (so reach out for a demo!). V1 is an innovative alternative to manufacturer-specific monitoring and management platforms, giving you an at-a-glance view of the health of your AV estate. They’ve added in IoT monitoring on top of the codec product, providing that often talked about “single pane of glass.” Great value and a very talented development team. https://www.flarekite.com/

Aqa (No Booth) – Aqa is bringing hardware into the picture to simplify the newish trend of peer-to-peer virtual networks instead of VPNs for connecting to customer AV hardware. Like Domotz, Aqa takes something that you could probably do yourself if you had the time and technical knowledge and makes it easy to roll out and start using. https://aqago.com/  

Homework!

If you’re at the show, this is your list of software to visit. This is our primary list of companies we’ll be spending the most time with.

If you’re not going to the show, this is time to do some research so you can start forming your own opinions on software that might be of value to you in the future.

And if we missed anything, LET US KNOW! This is our list, but it’s not exhaustive. We’ll also cover non-AV software that we find interesting and useful in future newsletters.

Password Management

It feels like every week we get a spreadsheet of login and password information. As a customer, we would be uncomfortable (to put it mildly) with our credentials being managed this way.

Get a password locker. And get a serious one for enterprise use like Keeper or Bitwarden. Anything else and you’re asking for a world of hurt with self-managed solutions or ones with a poor security record. Sometimes it’s hard to decide because there are a lot of choices, but there are two: pick one and stop living life dangerously.

One other thing to note, you may want to consider separating your password environments. We don’t store customer passwords in our corporate password locker. We put them in a secure knowledge base so they can be shared along with drawings, pictures, and configuration files to 3rd parties securely.

News and Links

a smiley face drawing on a white background with black text that reads "AV MSP appreciates you. Thank you for reading this newsletter"

QSC had a big announcement event. More information can be found in this summary: https://blogs.qsc.com/systems/2025/05/15/evolving-the-av-experience-unlocking-the-power-of-the-q-sys-full-stack-av-platform/

AVPro buys RTI, giving them a control solution: https://www.commercialintegrator.com/news/avpro-global-expands-portfolio-with-rti-acquisition/141805/

In a time when the internet is being choked out by terrible AI-generated websites, take some time to enjoy what it used to be by visiting https://theuselessweb.com/ where you’ll be served up a useless, but lovingly hand-made, website.  Here’s a fun one we found: https://paint.toys/calligram/

The Marketing

Thanks for reading, here’s um anúncio (that’s Portugese for advertisement)! We are AV MSP. We provide audio visual managed services directly to corporations, universities, and other organizations with large AV environments. We also provide services in collaboration with AV integrators and IT MSPs. All of this is done with modern ITSM software and standards. If you’re looking to elevate your services in the new year, please reach out to us at sales@av-msp.com to chat. You can also follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/av-msp/, on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/av-msp.com, and of course on our website at https://av-msp.com.

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