A Defining Moment for AV: What the Industry Told Us at the OpenAV Cloud Summit

Earlier this month, we launched OpenAV.Cloud - a moment that truly felt like a line in the sand. After months of conversations, planning, and behind-the-scenes collaboration, leaders from across the AV industry came together around a clear, shared goal: to make our systems more open, more connected, and far more responsive to the people who rely on them. 

To mark the launch, we recently held a live virtual summit with senior voices from every corner of the AV ecosystem: Adam Sowers of Sony, Petro Shimonishi of Panasonic, Fer Oliveira of Wesco, Mark Peterson of Shen Milsom & Wilke, and myself. Between us, we represented a broad range of industry players - manufacturers, distributors, vendors, and consultants. Yet what stood out wasn’t our differences. It was the clarity and common purpose we all brought to the table. We talked honestly about what’s broken, what’s holding the industry back, and what it will take to move forward.

In this blog, I want to take a closer look at the ideas that surfaced during the Summit, what they tell us about where the industry is headed, and how OpenAV.Cloud helps us get there.

Why This Moment Matters

There comes a point in every industry when the way things have always worked just doesn’t hold up anymore. For AV, that point is here. Expectations have shifted. Customers want systems that connect, share data, and adapt in real time. Integrators want tools that cooperate – without having to build custom workarounds for every project.

That’s the gap OpenAV Cloud is here to close. AV traditionally depended on protocols built for local control and on-prem integration. And that made sense for a while. But today, most of the systems our customers use – for scheduling, ticketing, messaging, video collaboration and more – already live in the cloud. This means that AV doesn’t just need to keep up. It needs to fit in.

As Mark Peterson of Shen Milsom & Wilke put it during the Summit, “End users want to own their own data. They want to own their own destiny.” That shift in mindset has changed the conversation. It's no longer about which vendor does what – it’s about whether the system as a whole can respond to the way people actually work.

Our industry has a vital role to play in how people meet, communicate, and collaborate. But we have to make AV easier to manage, easier to integrate, and easier to scale. OpenAV Cloud gives us a way to do that – with shared standards, open APIs, and a framework that brings AV into the larger digital conversation.

The Power of Partnership

One of the clearest takeaways from the AV Cloud Summit was just how much alignment there is right now across the industry. What we saw during the event echoed what we’ve been hearing from the initiative’s founding partners – companies like Sony Electronics, Panasonic, Shure, Legrand AV, and BrightSign – who all share the same goal: making it easier for systems to work together. 

Takashi Uchida, CEO of Panasonic Projector & Display Americas, put it well in a recent post on X:

“The launch of OpenAV Cloud represents a significant leap forward – a visionary initiative aimed at creating an open, interoperable AV ecosystem. By embracing an ecosystem approach, we can unlock new possibilities that will empower creators and enhance the user experience.”

That spirit showed up throughout the Summit. Adam Sowers of Sony talked about planning ahead to 2026, making sure their APIs stay in sync with partners across the industry. “Over the years, we hear time and time again that our end-customers and partners want interoperability. The way to do that is by having open APIs. From Sony’s perspective, we’ve been working on this for several years. If I want to work with Panasonic or any other company, we all agree what those standard APIs should look like. That makes it easier for everyone down the line. If we have an end-customer that says, ‘I really need Sony and Panasonic, or some other manufacturer, there’s already a level set between our developers, and it eases the entire process.”

What the Summit Made Clear

The AV Cloud Summit offered something we don’t see often enough: an honest conversation about what customers need and what the industry is ready to deliver. 

Mark Peterson of Shen Milsom & Wilke spoke from the perspective of enterprise clients. He described organizations facing real strain – balancing hybrid work, aging infrastructure, and limited resources. Teams in that position are looking for systems that fit together, share data, and simplify their day-to-day. “The end users are the ones living with the systems,” he said. “They’re the ones saying, ‘I need this to work across platforms because that’s my reality.’”

Fer Oliveira of Wesco talked about the opportunity this shift creates across the entire value chain. “This is a moment. We are going to change this industry,” he said. “The opportunities we can unlock by integrating all these devices... integrators, distributors, hardware vendors can all monetize more by taking this to a deeper level.”

That kind of clarity is changing how manufacturers think about interoperability. APIs are no longer a background detail. They’ve become the connective layer that allows AV to integrate with the platforms customers already rely on. As Peterson explained, “The entire AV industry is starting to shift from hybrid enablement to data-driven work optimization.”

From Vision to Action

OpenAV Cloud isn’t just a framework or a philosophy. It’s a shift in how AV systems actually get built and connected. Open by default. Cloud-ready. Designed to work across brands without requiring layers of custom integration. APIs that speak the same language. Platforms that stay in sync. Systems that respond to what’s happening on the ground – not just what they were programmed to do.

At the Summit, we walked through a few of the real-world scenarios this kind of alignment can unlock. A room booking system that moves meetings automatically when a device goes offline. A signage platform that updates content based on occupancy, without manual intervention. A monitoring layer that flags issues before anyone files a ticket. None of this requires new inventions. The pieces already exist – what’s been missing is a common way to connect them.

Petro Shimonishi of Panasonic captured what integrators have been asking for: “This is going to make it much easier for them to install and scale systems. Interoperability is the name of the game.”

Adam Sowers of Sony added, “The more we can do as manufacturers to ease that burden... the more we grow the capabilities within our industry.”

That’s what OpenAV Cloud is about – building something that helps the whole ecosystem work better. For customers. For integrators. For the people building and supporting the technology behind the scenes.

The roadmap is open. The invitation is open. And the momentum is already underway.

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