Then: The death of “good” cameras

Originally published on LinkedIn on 2015-11-24. The historical text below is preserved as written, including its contemporary claims and author information.

Recently I got married

We had 150 guests at the wedding and about 148 cameras (there were a couple of toddlers who I don’t think had smart phones, but that’s only a guess).

For one afternoon my beautiful bride and I owned the internet, or at least a small corner of it while approximately 7,453 photos of our wedding were posted to social media.

We had an official photographer and we’re looking forward to seeing those pictures, but at some level the moment has past. Everyone who wanted to could see 7,453 photos of us did. Time was at some level more important than quality.

Except the quality was great

I own a fantastic Canon DSLR camera, and a great compact (Canon S100) and an iPhone. I decided not to take the DSLR on honeymoon, it was just too bulky. I did take the compact and the iPhone (of course). Funny thing happened though. I took zero pictures with the compact. The iPhone had a better screen, slow motion, better exposure control and panorama shot.

The battery on the iPhone lasts a week !!!!

Now if you’ve ever been on a cruise ship you’ll know they charge like a wounded bull for data so the phone stayed in Airplane mode all week (wow that battery lasts a long time doing that!!

So I used the iPhone even though it wasn’t about uploading the pictures instantly. It was about simply being better at taking pictures. Oh and I never had to explain how to use the iPhone when getting someone else to take a photo for me.

My wedding photography didn’t use an DSLR either

I was somewhat surprised to discover that the wedding photographer didn’t use a DSLR either. She had a full frame sensor on a SONY a7R. She loves it, the quality is as good as any DSLR full frame camera (SONY makes most of the world’s sensors), but with none of the hassle of a mirror that needs flipping out of the way every time you take a picture (or shoot a movie)

Sell those Canon and Nikon shares

DSLR sales are down 17% in the last 12 months and have been declining for years. This is not a healthy market to be in. And it’s all their own fault. Canon and Nikon have built a perfect Excession Event market. Two companies fighting each other while others come along and redefine what success looks like in the market. Believe me, they will make my next keynote.

So what?

This got me thinking. If Canon and Nikon are losing out to solid state camera like the SONY a7R or even to my iPhone what chance have the Video Conferencing PTZ cameras got?

After all capturing a good quality image in a meeting room must be a lot easier than the million options that an DSLR needs to cope with.

Mute Button

The most powerful way to stop a person speaking on a Video Conference call is to move the camera to look at them. The look of fear and loathing on the face of pretty much everyone (I’m personally immune, but most are not) is palpable.

I think it’s one of the reasons  might well be onto something for large rooms and why devices like the ConferenceCam Connect from Logitech are gaining popularity. They capture the image without intimidating the users into silence. They are also orders of magnitude cheaper and fit perfectly into flexible huddle rooms. They are effectively the iPhones for meeting rooms.

There will always be “good” cameras

The death of the “good” camera is not here yet, but the amount of work possible in Software enabling a simpler device to capture the image is impressive now and will only increase at a Moore’s Law rate in the coming years. For the largest of rooms, for auditoriums and some specialised environments they will be necessary. But for that team chat in a standard huddle room the solid state camera is ideal. 

About the Author: Simon Dudley

Simon is a contrarian. He makes a habit of being the guy who questions the orthodoxy, the guy who doesn’t believe it just because the good and the great said it’s true. This has not always been good for his ascent up the corporate greasy pole. However it’s been very good for his employers if they are prepared to listen.

The Book The End of Certainty "How to thrive when playing by the rules is a losing strategy" explains why groupthink and the doing what you’ve always done is no longer the right move.

To keep tabs on his work please follow him on: ExcessionEvent.com

View the original LinkedIn article

Now: the follow-up

In 2015, I wrote an article called “The death of good cameras.”

It began with my wedding. We had roughly 150 guests and, by my highly scientific estimate, about 148 cameras. Pictures were being shared while the official photographer was still doing the job we had paid them to do.

The point was that the guests and the photographer were providing different kinds of value. The photographer was creating a carefully produced record. The guests were letting people experience something immediately.

That distinction was the interesting part. The headline was doing what headlines do: behaving slightly worse than the article underneath it.

Quality includes everything the customer has to do

On honeymoon, I left my DSLR behind because it was bulky. I took a compact camera and an iPhone. The phone’s usefulness extended beyond the picture itself: it was also the device through which a picture could be shared.

A camera manufacturer might reasonably compare sensors, lenses and image quality. A customer also compares the effort required to carry the device, take the photograph, move it somewhere useful and show it to another person.

Those are different evaluations. The customer is entitled to use theirs.

That is the business lesson I would retain from the original article. A technically superior component can lose appeal when a competing product makes the whole activity easier.

Software changed what small cameras could do

The technical direction also mattered. Computational photography combined imaging hardware with algorithms that could improve the output of a small camera.

A research survey by Delbracio and colleagues describes techniques including burst photography, noise reduction and super-resolution. Its account explains how computing changed the capabilities of mobile imaging. [1]

The useful strategic observation is that the boundaries of the product were changing. A camera could be assessed as a system of capture, processing and use, rather than through the lens and sensor alone.

That does not mean optics stopped mattering. Light still has to reach a sensor. It means the final experience depends on more than the traditional component comparison.

Dedicated cameras did not obligingly disappear

The word “death” needs some qualification.

CIPA’s figures show that its reporting companies shipped approximately 9.44 million digital still cameras in 2025. About 6.31 million were mirrorless cameras and 0.69 million were SLRs. Dedicated cameras were still a market, with substantial differences between categories. These are shipments reported by CIPA members, rather than a count of every camera sold worldwide. [2]

Those figures do not, by themselves, establish why someone bought a camera or how much of an earlier decline smartphones caused.

They do make one correction unavoidable: my original title was too sweeping. The more useful question concerns which customers still value a dedicated camera enough to carry, buy and operate one.

“Better” always needs a user and a task attached to it.

A promising direction is not a winning product

In January 2016, I followed up with an enthusiastic piece about the Light L16. The original explicitly noted that it had not yet shipped and that professional adoption remained uncertain.

That caveat deserves to survive any reuse of the article. It was an assessment of a proposed product and a technological direction, written before the market had delivered its verdict.

A proper retrospective on the L16 should investigate its shipped experience, commercial history and customer response. This draft does not substitute an assumption for that research.

The distinction is useful well beyond photography. You can identify an important technical possibility while still lacking the evidence needed to choose its successful supplier.

The question for your own business

If you sell technology, look at the entire task your customer is trying to complete.

Where do they have to transfer information? What must they learn? What do they have to carry, connect, configure or explain? Which parts of the process disappear if they choose another solution?

That examination can reveal a competitor your product comparison never considered.

The camera story remains valuable because it makes the question tangible. I could appreciate my DSLR and still leave it at home. Admiration is a rather poor substitute for use.

Where have you seen convenience change a market’s definition of quality?

Sources

• Original: The death of “good” cameras, November 24, 2015.
• Follow-up: Death of good cameras, Part II: the Light L16, January 4, 2016.
• [1] Mobile Computational Photography: A Tour, Delbracio, Kelly, Brown and Milanfar, 2021. Used for the technical explanation, not to establish the financial performance of camera brands.
• [2] CIPA: Production and Shipment of Digital Still Cameras, January–December 2025. Total shipments 9,438,876; mirrorless 6,311,054; SLR 690,911. Member-company shipments are not retail sales or the entire imaging-device market.

Then: Cisco buys Acano for $700m

Originally published on LinkedIn on 2015-11-20. The historical text below is preserved as written, including its contemporary claims and author information.

Very interesting news this morning that

Cisco is purchasing Acano for $700m.

Few things to think about on this one.

Reports of the death of Hardware are greatly exaggerated

A number of people have been stating that hardware is dead and the future of Video Conferencing is all Cloud based at an infrastructure level. This deal seems to prove there is still life in hardware. Of course Acano produces devices brilliantly suited for a world of SaaS. After all the talk about Cloud, the actual compute has to be done somewhere. Acano are obviously right at the front of that.

Cisco has money, lots and lots of money

Cisco are a huge and highly successful company, and the typically buy new technology rather than build it themselves. It’s hard to argue with that model and it certainly works well for them. The Codian platform is now very long in the tooth so Acano was an obvious choice.

Cisco can’t bring money back to the USA, so spends it abroad

Cisco has a huge war chest of cash off shore and can’t bring it back to the US without paying cash. So it make slots of sense for them to buy a UK based company.

There’s more to life than SaaS

Dr Blake and his team have proven that there is more to life than a single minded rush to SaaS. One does have to wonder if the CEO’s who destroyed their own infrastructure business still think it a wise decision, or will have any difficult questions asked by their investors about their strategy.

Anyone who’s read my stuff recently knows I’ve been a SaaS fan, and certainly a low cost device in the meeting room advocate, but this deal shows there’s still money in Hardware at an infrastructure level.

What’s next?

Cisco acquisitions are often the catalysts for consolidation in the market. I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that the Cisco Tandberg deal, the Lifesize Logitech one and the Avaya Radvision deal all happened in short order. It will be interesting to see who gets “merged” next.

What about the resellers?

Many Cisco resellers have been selling the Acano product line for a while. Resellers show the most value to clients when putting disparate systems together and the Acano technology worked very well for many clients. Cisco will now not only own the solution, but will also regain the most important thing for them, Cisco account control. It will also lower the margins for resellers significantly. I suspect there are some glum faces in the major Video Conferencing resellers this morning.

What about Pexip?

All this is probably a mixed blessing for Pexip. It gives them a sense of a valuation, and it shows the space matters. Equally the ABC (Anything But Cisco) crowd now have one supplier not two. But on a negative side the number of potential suitors is low and the sales machine Acano technology are about to unleash formidable.

Polycom?

Polycom have been lagging in the infrastructure game for a while. They have no Cloud offering (how is that even possible in 2015!?!?), and their Hardware infrastructure is uncompetitive. It seems obvious to me they must buy Pexip. It would be a strange negotiation. Both need each other, and no one else needs either of them. Just how does one price that?

Cloud providers?

It's possible that a few of the Cloud infrastructure providers would have liked the idea of getting under the Cisco wing. I think it's safe to say those hopes, if they ever existed, are well and truly dead.

Congratulations

$700m is a great deal of money even to Cisco, and makes this one of the biggest deals ever in the Video Conferencing industry. For a company a little over 4 years old to produce a valuation like this is remarkable and I warmly congratulate them.

Conclusions

There is an old Chinese curse that states “May you live in interesting times”

The Video Conferencing industry has just hit some exceedingly interesting times.

View the original LinkedIn article

Now: the follow-up

In November 2015, Cisco announced its intention to buy Acano in a deal it described as $700 million in cash and assumed equity awards, with additional retention incentives. I wrote about it on the day. The video conferencing industry was busy arguing about the future, which was helpful, because arguing about the future was considerably easier than getting everyone into the same meeting. [1]

The fashionable argument was that everything would move to the cloud. Infrastructure would become somebody else’s problem. Hardware was yesterday’s story.

My reaction was that Acano complicated that rather tidy picture.

Looking back, I still think that was the useful observation. Some of the other things I wrote deserve a little less confidence.

What the acquisition actually established

Cisco completed the acquisition on January 29, 2016. In August that year, its announcement of Cisco Meeting Server explicitly connected the product’s scalability and interoperability to technology acquired with Acano. It also described integration with the wider Cisco collaboration portfolio. [2][3]

That is a reasonably concrete outcome. A technology Cisco bought became part of the platform it sold.

It also exposes a weakness in my original framing. I leaned heavily on the idea that the deal demonstrated there was still money in hardware. Acano’s value was broader: software, interoperability and the ability to connect different collaboration environments mattered too. [1][3]

The distinction matters. If you diagnose a software and interoperability acquisition primarily as a vote for hardware, you risk learning the wrong lesson from a real event.

The buyer’s problem survives the industry slogan

A supplier can announce a new architecture in the morning. The customer still has the equipment, contracts, users and operational responsibilities it had the night before.

That gap creates a practical question: how does the organisation get from its current environment to the one it wants?

Interoperability has value because customers often need a transition, rather than a religious conversion. As a commercial interpretation, that is what makes this acquisition interesting to revisit. Cisco’s contemporary explanation placed considerable emphasis on bringing different systems and users together. [1]

For a buyer, the useful questions concern what can connect, what can be retained, how the service operates and who takes responsibility when it fails.

“The future is cloud” does not answer those questions. Neither does “on premises is safer.” Both statements require a customer, a requirement and some evidence before they become useful advice.

My forecasts were still forecasts

The original article also speculated about reseller margins, Cisco’s control of customer accounts and what Pexip and Polycom ought to do next.

Those passages belong in the historical record as my expectations in November 2015. The acquisition announcement did not establish those outcomes, and the evidence cited here does not measure them. I would need subsequent financial, channel and company evidence before claiming a successful prediction.

That is the discipline this archive should impose on me. Preserve what I wrote, then compare it with what can actually be demonstrated.

There is very little educational value in discovering that, after several careful edits, I was right all along.

A better way to assess the next acquisition

For the next collaboration deal, I would start with four questions.

1. Which customer problem becomes easier to solve?
2. Which capability is being acquired: technology, distribution, talent, customer access, or a combination?
3. How will that capability fit the buyer’s existing platform and commercial model?
4. Which predicted benefits can we check later?

The fourth question is particularly inconvenient. It prevents a confident announcement from quietly becoming an unquestioned success story.

Acano provides a useful example because there is a visible line from the acquisition to Cisco Meeting Server. It gives us something concrete to examine alongside the broader industry narrative. [3]

That is the point of B4Obvious: return to the choices people faced before the outcome, preserve their uncertainty, and examine what those choices taught us.

What do you remember about the Acano acquisition? Which practical problem mattered most to you at the time?

Sources

• Original: Cisco buys Acano for $700m, November 20, 2015.
• [1] Cisco announces intent to acquire Acano, November 20, 2015. The $700m figure refers to the announced terms, not a reconstruction of acquisition accounting.
• [2] Acano joins Cisco: it’s official, January 29, 2016.
• [3] Meetings for everyone with Cisco Meeting Server, August 24, 2016.

The camera works. The microphones work. Nobody has dropped it down the stairs.

Nevertheless, the organisation's operating requirements may have overtaken it. That is an uncomfortable conversation—and one procurement should anticipate before installation.

For customers planning a five-to-seven-year hardware cycle, software support must be part of the original specification. Physical durability alone cannot deliver the promised service life.

However, we should challenge one tempting assumption: Android support is not universally becoming shorter.

Microsoft has extended several Teams device support windows. Its current table lists Android 12 and 13 support through August 15, 2030, and Android 15 through October 15, 2031. Those are Microsoft Teams support dates, not guarantees of every manufacturer's security servicing or hardware support.[1]

The real problem is how much supported life remains when the customer buys.

Consider an Android 13 device purchased in October 2026, with no confirmed upgrade commitment. The published Microsoft support window ends in August 2030: less than four years away. A seven-year depreciation plan does not move that date to 2033.

Nor does a new purchase necessarily contain a newly released platform. The support clock may already be running before the reseller opens the box.

Several clocks matter: hardware serviceability, OEM firmware and security maintenance, Android upgrade capability, application support and meeting-platform certification. They overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Microsoft says maintaining certification and deciding whether to recertify a specific device are OEM responsibilities.[1]

MDEP can improve the foundation. Microsoft's long-term servicing branch provides a platform path designed for stability and extended servicing.[2] Shared engineering can make maintenance more practical, particularly compared with every manufacturer solving every underlying problem independently.

But MDEP is not a universal seven-year warranty. Buyers still need a dated, product-specific commitment. A platform feature is useful only when the manufacturer delivers and supports it in the device you purchased.

Architecture offers another trade-off.

Separating compute from cameras and audio may allow replacement of the faster-ageing component while retaining useful AV hardware, subject to compatibility and certification. Barco's modular room systems illustrate that separation.[3] Integrated appliances can simplify deployment, reduce component count and clarify support, but may require a broader replacement when their compute foundation reaches its limit.

Neither approach automatically wins. Modularity can introduce integration effort; integration can concentrate lifecycle risk.

For resellers, the opportunity is to sell a lifecycle plan alongside the room: remaining support, upgrade commitments, replacement options and realistic costs. For customers, those answers should influence valuation and procurement approval.

For vendors, longevity could become a powerful differentiator. Keeping a room secure and supported for its intended life may matter more than another impressive launch-day feature.

The ecosystem wins only if it keeps working through the years the customer paid for.

If a manufacturer expects you to buy hardware for seven years, should it have to guarantee seven years of supported operation—or tell you, before purchase, exactly which part of that promise it cannot make?

Sources

1. Microsoft: Android versioning support for Teams devices
2. Microsoft: MDEP long-term servicing branch announcement
3. Barco: ClickShare Hub Pro modular room system

Support dates checked October 11, 2026. The purchase example assumes no subsequent OS upgrade or recertification; confirm OEM commitments for the specific device.

The answer is more interesting than “the big platforms swallow everyone”. Some specialists can become more valuable. Others risk becoming interchangeable parts in someone else's system.

The companies below illustrate different strategic positions. They should not all be treated as small suppliers, or as vendors making the same architectural bet.

Q-SYS already brings an ecosystem argument. Its position extends beyond a camera or speaker to room integration and control. It has joined MDEP, with its QSP-11 scheduling panel built on Android 15 and MDEP. Its announced RoomSuite Collaboration Bar, however, is Windows-based.[1][2] That mixed approach demonstrates why joining MDEP does not mean moving an entire portfolio onto Android. The opportunity is coordinating rooms; the challenge is retaining that value when simpler systems cover more requirements.

Barco can occupy the connection point. ClickShare Hub Pro is a modular MDEP-based room system combining a native meeting experience with ClickShare content sharing.[3] Partnerships let it assemble room solutions without manufacturing every microphone or camera. Its opportunity is making the combined experience convenient. Its risk is that sharing and meeting platforms increasingly provide more of that convenience themselves.

Biamp can connect compute with its audio ecosystem. Devio UCX combines UC compute and DSP, with Biamp Launch commissioning and Workplace management. Biamp now lists UCX 1000 as shipping.[4][5] That is a direct response to the platform shift. The challenge is proving that audio performance and commissioning advantages justify choosing its wider system.

Sennheiser can win through complementary expertise. Its TeamConnect Bar M is offered in a certified Teams Rooms bundle with Barco's Hub Pro.[6] That demonstrates participation in an MDEP-based system without establishing that the Sennheiser bar itself runs MDEP. The opportunity is trusted audio and AV performance across partnerships. The risk is having less influence over the compute platform and overall customer relationship.

Other specialists face variations of the same choice. Huddly supplies differentiated video within Barco bundles; Shure has announced MDEP participation; AVer continues to offer Teams-certified cameras.[7][8][9] These examples show several routes: join the platform, partner around it, or supply certified peripherals. Certification and MDEP participation are different claims.

Collectively, shared foundations can lower barriers and make specialist products easier to include in enterprise deployments. Individually, success depends on being difficult to replace for a reason customers can measure.

The counterweight is bargaining power. Whoever owns the room specification, management portal and support relationship may shape which suppliers get selected. A superb component can become commercially vulnerable if customers barely know who supplied it.

For resellers, this creates an important responsibility: turn partnerships into clear accountability. A certified bundle still needs someone to resolve problems spanning several companies.

My assessment is that specialists retain a strong future where they solve difficult problems better than integrated alternatives. They become vulnerable when their differentiation is merely a specification that the next product refresh can copy.

Will the platform era make specialist AV expertise more valuable—or will the companies owning the room ecosystem capture the value while specialists do the difficult work?

Sources

1. Q-SYS: QSP-11 scheduling panel
2. Q-SYS: Collaboration portfolio and RoomSuite announcement
3. Barco: ClickShare Hub Pro
4. Biamp: MDEP and Devio UCX
5. Biamp: Devio UCX now shipping
6. Barco: Sennheiser TeamConnect Bar M room system
7. Huddly: Barco room bundles
8. Shure: MDEP participation
9. AVer: TR535 Teams certification

Product positions checked October 11, 2026. Strategic opportunities and risks are the author's assessment.

If deployment is awkward, support is fragmented and the next software upgrade becomes a small diplomatic incident, excellent image quality offers limited consolation.

That is why the MDEP story matters beyond Logitech's latest video bar. It points toward a market in which customers increasingly judge the ecosystem surrounding a product, rather than the product in isolation.

Microsoft describes MDEP as a shared Android-based foundation combining enterprise security, management and multi-vendor choice. Manufacturers can extend it to build their own differentiated products.[1]

The potential advantage for hardware vendors is substantial. Sharing more of the foundation can reduce duplicated platform work and let engineering teams concentrate on audio, video, integration and the user experience. Smaller organisations may gain access to capabilities that would be expensive to develop independently.

For customers, the attractive outcome is a room estate that becomes easier to deploy, govern and maintain. For resellers, it is a more repeatable offer with fewer surprises after installation.

But standardisation also changes where differentiation lives.

If competitors share the same underlying platform, saying “we have an enterprise-grade foundation” becomes less persuasive as a unique selling point. Important, certainly. Exclusive, increasingly unlikely.

Vendors must demonstrate what they add: better intelligibility in difficult rooms, more useful framing, simpler commissioning, stronger fleet visibility or clearer support commitments. The common platform raises the floor; it does not decide who builds the best experience above it.

There is also a dependency problem. A vendor may gain engineering efficiency while losing some freedom over its underlying roadmap. Customers may gain hardware choice while retaining a common platform dependency.

An ecosystem can therefore help and hinder at the same time.

Its strength is coordination. Components, software and support designed to work together can reduce operational effort. Its weakness is the temptation to turn convenient integration into expensive captivity: proprietary accessories, difficult migrations and management subscriptions that become hard to escape.

Nor should “ecosystem” become a polite word for buying everything from one manufacturer. Barco's MDEP-based ClickShare Hub and Sennheiser's TeamConnect Bar demonstrate that a certified room solution can combine complementary vendors.[2]

The winning ecosystem may be a partnership, not a single brand's catalogue.

My view is that products will remain essential, but customers will increasingly select them within an operating model. The winning offer will explain how the room is installed, monitored, updated, repaired and eventually replaced—not simply how impressive it looks during a demonstration.

That shifts the reseller's role too. The opportunity is to sell a dependable outcome and remain accountable for it. Moving boxes is still a business; explaining how those boxes cooperate over several years is a more defensible one.

A brilliant product can win a comparison. A coherent ecosystem can win the deployment, the renewal and the next building.

When you choose an AV ecosystem, are you buying years of reduced operational effort—or accepting a dependency you will only discover when you try to leave?

Sources

1. Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform documentation
2. Barco: ClickShare Hub Pro and Sennheiser TeamConnect Bar M room system

One camp prefers appliances: fewer components, straightforward installation and less opportunity for someone to treat the room computer as their personal troubleshooting experiment.

The other prefers Windows: familiar enterprise tools, broader integration options and access to capabilities that may arrive there first.

Both camps have useful arguments. Neither gets to win every room.

First, define the comparison correctly. MDEP is an Android-based foundation used by hardware manufacturers. Windows is a separate operating system. For Teams customers, the practical choice is between a certified MDEP-based Android appliance and a certified Teams Rooms system running Windows.

MDEP does not turn an Android appliance into a Windows room, or guarantee feature parity.

The appliance argument begins with integration. Compute, audio, cameras and device software can be packaged into a deliberately constrained system. In a repeatable room design, that can reduce installation effort and simplify responsibility.

For a reseller deploying many similar spaces, repeatability matters. Every additional component, cable and configuration step adds something to install, document and potentially investigate later.

However, those benefits depend on the actual design. Android systems can also serve complex spaces, and a poorly chosen appliance can be just as awkward as a poorly chosen PC.

Windows has a strong case where requirements demand its particular capabilities. Microsoft's current commercial comparison lists breakout-room participation, multi-camera send, third-party custom room control and 21:9 front-of-room displays on Windows, but not Android. Conversely, Android has some capabilities Windows lacks, including local PTZ controls within the listed Teams experience. Hardware support must still be confirmed.[1]

That is why buying from an old comparison chart is risky. Microsoft says core meeting functionality exists across platforms, while new features can arrive at different times.

Security is another area where slogans fail.

MDEP offers an enterprise Android foundation, including hardware-based device attestation. Windows Teams Rooms also have a purpose-built security architecture, rather than simply being ordinary desktop PCs left in a conference room. Microsoft documents protections for both platforms.[2][3]

The question is which approach fits your organisation's controls and operating model. Familiarity with Windows can be valuable; appliance constraints can also be valuable. Neither guarantees good administration.

Serviceability deserves equal attention. A separate Windows compute unit may be replaceable while keeping functioning AV peripherals, subject to compatibility and certification. An integrated appliance may offer simpler replacement and fewer separate parts, but the replacement scope can be larger.

Neither approach guarantees a longer useful life. Buyers need explicit commitments covering operating-system updates, firmware, applications and hardware support.

Cost should therefore include installation, management, subscriptions, support visits and eventual replacement—not merely the price of the box.

My recommendation is to standardise by room requirements. Choose the simplest certified architecture that delivers the features, integration and lifecycle your organisation actually needs. Using both platforms can be entirely sensible if the exceptions are deliberate and supportable.

If you removed the Windows-versus-Android labels from your next room proposal, which architecture would win on required capabilities, operational effort and total cost—and would you still make the same purchase?

Sources

1. Microsoft: Teams Rooms and Devices feature comparison
2. Microsoft: MDEP platform overview
3. Microsoft: Teams Rooms on Windows and Teams Android device security

Feature availability checked October 11, 2026. Confirm current application, hardware, cloud and licence support before specifying a room.

If enough manufacturers adopt Microsoft's Device Ecosystem Platform, Microsoft gains a position beneath the application: a shared foundation connecting hardware, security and enterprise administration.

That could be a more consequential development than another improvement to the Teams interface.

MDEP is built on open-source Android and designed for manufacturers to extend and customise. Microsoft presents it as a consistent platform for connected devices, combining hardware-rooted trust, enterprise management and multiple hardware suppliers.[1][2]

The argument for a Microsoft-dominated future is therefore credible.

Large organisations value consistency. If their identity, security and collaboration systems already revolve around Microsoft, room devices aligned with that environment can be easier to justify. Manufacturers gain a recognised enterprise foundation. Resellers gain a more repeatable architectural story.

Success could reinforce itself. More participating vendors make the platform more attractive to buyers; more interested buyers give vendors another reason to participate.

But influence over the foundation is different from ownership of the entire experience.

MDEP does not inherently require every meeting to use Teams. Jabra explicitly states that the platform can support other services, including Zoom. Logitech lists Rally Bar 2 as certified for Teams, Zoom Rooms and Google Meet.[3][4]

That makes the future more interesting than a simple Microsoft takeover.

One plausible outcome is Microsoft becoming a widely used infrastructure supplier while meeting services continue competing above it. A customer could benefit from Microsoft's underlying security architecture while preferring another company's meeting experience.

Another possibility is a more divided market. Vendors may maintain different software configurations or platform paths to satisfy competing service providers and customer requirements. Supporting multiple meeting services does not, by itself, prove that every configuration uses identical underlying components.

A third possibility is growing standardisation without much reduction in customer complexity. Manufacturers could share more plumbing while retaining separate portals, subscription models, accessories and support processes. The architecture becomes tidier; the AV manager still has several dashboards open.

These are scenarios, not announced industry outcomes.

The strongest argument for convergence is operational efficiency. Maintaining several independent foundations costs engineering effort that could otherwise improve products.

The strongest argument against excessive convergence is concentration. A widely shared platform can create common dependencies: changes to policy, release schedules or technical requirements may affect many vendors at once. Customers can choose several hardware suppliers while still depending on the same underlying platform provider.

For resellers, that suggests an opportunity beyond selling equipment. Customers will need help distinguishing genuine portability from a compatibility logo, and shared infrastructure from shared accountability.

My expectation is greater Microsoft influence alongside continued vendor and service competition. The unresolved issue is how much practical freedom customers retain when they want to change direction.

The most revealing evidence will be operational: switching costs, firmware requirements, support commitments and the management features available outside Teams.

Would you welcome Microsoft becoming the common foundation beneath competing meeting platforms—or would that leave you with plenty of hardware choice but too little architectural independence?

Sources

1. Microsoft: MDEP platform overview
2. Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform documentation
3. Jabra: MDEP security and multi-platform support (PDF)
4. Logitech: Enterprise portfolio announcement, October 8, 2026

For anyone who knows Logitech's CollabOS, that raises an understandable question. Has Logitech replaced its operating system, surrendered its independence, or turned its video bar into a Microsoft-only device?

The published announcement supports a more measured interpretation.

Logitech is adopting MDEP as a foundation while continuing to provide its own room experience. Its new portfolio includes both MDEP-based products and devices described as CollabOS appliances. Rally Bar 2 is also listed as certified for Microsoft Teams, Zoom Rooms and Google Meet.[1][2]

The useful mental model is a division of responsibilities.

Microsoft supplies an Android-based platform designed for enterprise security and management. Logitech supplies the device capabilities and integration that make the room feel like a Logitech room. The meeting application supplies the service users actually join.

That is a simplified explanation, rather than a complete published software diagram. But it explains why MDEP and CollabOS can coexist.

MDEP is not Windows. Nor does its presence mean Logitech's camera intelligence, audio processing and management tools become Microsoft products. CollabOS remains Logitech's software environment, with Logitech Sync supporting deployment and management.[3][4]

The potential benefit is sensible. Logitech can draw on a shared platform foundation and direct more effort toward features customers experience. Security and platform maintenance still matter enormously, but customers rarely buy a room because they admire its underlying software plumbing.

However, Logitech is following a path others have already taken.

Yealink's MeetingBar A50 combines an MDEP-based Android platform with its own IntelliFocus, audio processing and device management. Neat explicitly describes combining MDEP's framework with Neat intelligence and AI experiences. HP announced plans in November 2025 to integrate MDEP across Poly video systems, phones, controllers and scheduling displays.[5][6][7]

There is an important distinction: HP's announcement establishes its direction, rather than proving that every Poly product has completed that transition. Equally, joining MDEP does not mean every Neat or Yealink device has the same implementation.

Logitech's move therefore validates an industry approach. Its competitive advantage must come from how well it executes above that foundation.

The trade-off is greater dependence on Microsoft's platform decisions. Logitech retains substantial differentiation, but some of its underlying direction now rests with a powerful partner that also shapes the Teams experience.

Customers should welcome the potential consistency while resisting assumptions. Multi-platform certification does not establish identical capabilities in every meeting mode. Buyers still need product-specific answers about provisioning, updates, management and support.

Existing customers also need perspective. Logitech says current devices remain certified and supported under existing policies, with MDEP applying to future devices. The announcement itself does not create a compulsory replacement programme.[8]

If competing video bars increasingly share the same foundation, what would make you choose Logitech: the hardware, the meeting experience, the management tools—or the quality of its long-term commitments?

Sources

1. Logitech: Introducing next-generation Teams Rooms solutions built on MDEP
2. Logitech: Enterprise portfolio announcement, October 8, 2026
3. Microsoft: MDEP platform overview
4. Logitech: CollabOS
5. Yealink: MeetingBar A50
6. Neat: Neat OS and MDEP integration
7. HP: Poly MDEP integration plans, November 18, 2025
8. Logitech: MDEP and existing CollabOS devices

Then someone from IT asks which Android version it runs, how long it will receive security updates, and who is responsible when an upgrade breaks something.

Suddenly, the camera specification becomes considerably less interesting.

“Android” has never meant that every meeting room appliance runs the same software. Manufacturers build their products using the Android Open Source Project, then integrate their own hardware support, device software and meeting applications. Microsoft's documentation describes Android operating systems and firmware as managed by the hardware manufacturers, with updates submitted for Teams certification.[1]

That flexibility helped create an attractive market. Manufacturers could develop distinctive camera framing, audio processing, accessory support and management tools. Customers gained compact appliances that could deliver a meeting without a separate room PC.

The downside was a complicated ownership chain.

The meeting application might come from Microsoft. Device firmware came from the manufacturer. Underlying capabilities depended partly on the processor and its supporting software. The customer bought one room system, but its continued usefulness depended on several organisations keeping their work aligned.

Across a mixed estate, that creates an obvious administrative burden. Similar-looking rooms can have different upgrade paths, support dates and operational requirements. For resellers, each variation becomes another thing to understand, document and support.

Certification adds another distinction. A product's certification end date and Microsoft's support end date are separate milestones. Manufacturers may extend certification by upgrading Android and recertifying a device, but buyers should verify the actual product commitment rather than assume every appliance follows the same path.[1][2]

None of this means older Android devices are automatically insecure, or that manufacturers have done a poor job. A well-maintained vendor platform can be excellent. The problem is that the word “Android” provides remarkably little reassurance about what happens five years after installation.

Microsoft's Device Ecosystem Platform, or MDEP, addresses this problem by offering manufacturers a shared Android-based foundation with enterprise security and management capabilities. Microsoft positions it as a way to reduce platform integration work while allowing partners to build differentiated products.[3]

The attraction is clear: less duplicated engineering underneath, with competition continuing above it.

The counterargument is equally reasonable. Standardisation brings dependence. If more manufacturers rely on one platform supplier, that supplier gains greater influence over their direction. A common foundation also does not automatically produce identical update schedules, support contracts or management experiences.

For AV managers, the buying conversation needs to expand beyond picture quality. Who delivers patches? What support period is guaranteed? What happens when certification changes? Can the room move to another meeting service?

For resellers, explaining those answers is increasingly part of the value proposition. A low purchase price can become expensive if lifecycle planning arrives as an unpleasant surprise.

When you buy a meeting room appliance, how much do you really know about the software commitments supporting it—and who should be accountable when those commitments run out?

Sources

1. Microsoft: Android versions supported on Teams devices
2. Microsoft: Teams Rooms on Android certified devices
3. Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform documentation

That was one of the most useful lessons from my B4Obvious conversation with Jason Moss, an old friend and former Logitech colleague. His career has taken him through semiconductors, electronic publishing, enterprise video collaboration and connected building systems. Across those different markets, a recurring question emerges: what becomes possible when we stop accepting the existing arrangement?

The longer cable that became a different meeting room

At Logitech, customers using a separate conference camera and tabletop speakerphone kept asking for longer cables. The feedback seemed clear enough. Camera here, speakerphone there, more cable in between.

Jason investigated the request during customer visits. One customer described the awkwardness of putting equipment and visible wiring into a boardroom furnished with an expensive table and chairs. The frustration concerned the finished room as much as the cable length.

The underlying need was a clean, simple installation. Jason explains that this insight helped shape MeetUp, bringing the camera and audio together near the screen.

There was another benefit: people could face the display rather than gather around a speakerphone on the table. The design challenged a habit inherited from audio conferencing.

This is a useful example of customer discovery. People often explain a difficulty using the language of the system they already know. Product teams need to understand that difficulty well enough to consider a different arrangement.

The economics behind video conferencing disruption

The product story becomes more interesting when you consider the economics underneath it. Jason describes Logitech’s experience with OEM manufacturing and consumer camera technology as an important advantage.

The smartphone market was driving rapid improvements in camera components at enormous scale. Logitech could draw on that world, while parts of the traditional AV market approached cameras through the economics and expectations of broadcast technology.

The resulting cost differences helped make video collaboration practical in more spaces. In our discussion, I recalled looking at a small computer and a Logitech camera and questioning why a customer still needed expensive dedicated conferencing hardware.

A change in component cost can therefore become a change in buying behaviour, deployment scale and competitive advantage. Watching established competitors alone would miss part of the explanation. You also need to watch the adjacent markets changing what customers can afford.

A career built around technical and commercial understanding

Jason studied computer science at UC Davis, but realised he was more interested in applying technology in business than spending his life programming. He added a business minor and joined AMD through a technical sales engineering programme.

The programme combined rotations with demanding assessments and practical selling experience. Jason remembers cold calling prospective customers from physical phone books and learning how to recover from rejection.

Later, a manager brought him onto the HP account team because she recognised a gap in how the team related to younger customer decision makers. She challenged the normal progression through sales roles to give him that opportunity.

Jason then had to learn the business and earn his place. The story makes a useful distinction between giving somebody access and preparing them to use it. A different perspective becomes valuable when it is supported by competence.

Technology needs an ecosystem

At E Ink, Jason worked around the emergence of electronic reading, including relationships with Amazon and the wider publishing industry.

The display technology mattered, but so did getting publishers to make content available in a usable electronic format. A successful reading device depends on much more than the screen inside it.

Jason also draws a distinction between the value a business creates and the reward its early participants receive. He regarded E Ink as a substantial commercial success while questioning whether the timing of its sale fully rewarded the people who helped build that success.

That is a useful qualification to the usual startup story. A growing market, a valuable technology and a satisfactory personal outcome are related, but they are different measures.

Joining QSC before the world changed

Jason joined QSC in January 2020, shortly before the pandemic. Logitech’s cameras soon faced extraordinary demand, while many of QSC’s traditional customer environments faced severe disruption.

He describes the early months as difficult, then praises the leadership team’s ability to focus and make decisions quickly. In his account, Q-SYS continued growing even as other parts of the wider business faced pressure.

He was attracted to the opportunity to build. His description of business maturity moves through an architect phase, a contractor phase and a facilities management phase. He prefers the earlier stages, where direction and structure are still taking shape.

That makes the move understandable without pretending its timing was easy to predict. A career decision can fit your strengths even when the immediate circumstances make it look uncomfortable.

From meeting rooms to connected buildings

His discussion of high-impact spaces illustrates the same approach. An executive room, an all-hands space or a customer presentation environment can be judged by its role in the wider business organisation. Describing it only as complex or expensive obscures that role. Jason says QSC deliberately framed these spaces around the impact they deliver. The useful question for buyers is what the room must accomplish, who depends on it, and what happens if the experience fails at an important moment.

The interview ends with Jason’s view of the next transformation: connecting building systems so organisations can understand both their operations and the experiences they provide.

Lighting, building management, AV and IT often sit in separate technical and organisational worlds. Jason argues that shared connectivity and visibility can help improve how the whole environment performs.

He also expects this transition to take time. Buildings contain expensive physical infrastructure, and existing channels serve different disciplines at different stages of a project.

For me, the competitive intelligence lesson is straightforward: examine the assumptions holding a market together, the economics changing around it, and the customer frustrations those assumptions create. That is often where the next opportunity begins.

Watch or listen to the full Jason Moss conversation at https://b4obvious.com. For more analysis of competitive strategy and market change, explore https://excessionevents.com.

That distinction matters because confident people shape decisions. They win attention, reassure colleagues and make uncertain plans sound manageable. Accuracy arrives later, by which point the budget has been approved and everyone has a branded notebook.

The central problem is not confidence itself. It is poor calibration: a mismatch between how certain we feel and how often we are actually right.

Confidence is a forecast

If someone is well calibrated, statements made with 80% confidence should prove correct approximately 80% of the time. They will still be wrong occasionally. That is what the other 20% is doing there.

Most people do not naturally keep this kind of score. We remember being right, explain away being wrong and quietly edit the confidence we originally held. A prediction that felt certain can later become something we were merely ‘considering.’ Memory offers a surprisingly flexible audit function.

This is why confidence needs to be treated as a forecast rather than a performance. It should be recorded, tested and improved.

Why intelligent people still get it wrong

Overconfidence is often presented as an arrogance problem. That is too convenient.

Accurate self-assessment requires mental work. You must consider the evidence supporting your view, the evidence against it, the reliability of your sources and the possibilities you have missed. Under pressure, the brain replaces difficult questions with easier ones.

Instead of asking, ‘How strong is the evidence?’ we ask, ‘Can I explain this clearly?’

Instead of asking, ‘Is this candidate capable?’ we ask, ‘Did this candidate seem confident?’

Instead of asking, ‘Is the strategy working?’ we ask, ‘Are the headline numbers going up?’

These substitutions are efficient, plausible and occasionally ruinous.

The popular version of the Dunning–Kruger effect adds another oversimplification. The familiar Mount Stupid graph was not produced by the original research. The underlying finding was that poor performers showed a larger gap between estimated and actual performance, while stronger performers were generally closer to reality.

That does not mean beginners are uniquely foolish. Self-evaluation is simply another skill, and people can lack both the ability to perform a task and the ability to recognize their mistakes.

Business provides noisy feedback

In a controlled environment, people can learn from clear outcomes. Chess players receive prompt feedback: the move works or it does not.

Organizations operate in messier conditions. Markets move, competitors react and good decisions can produce bad outcomes. Reckless decisions can also succeed, which is more dangerous because success tends to end the investigation.

Nick Leeson’s unauthorized trading at Barings Bank illustrates the problem. An early hidden loss was eventually recovered after he took increasingly risky positions. The recovery did not prove that his method was sound. It rewarded him for surviving it.

When another loss appeared, he repeated the behavior. His positions grew while management continued sending money, reassured by apparent profits and Leeson’s reputation. The bank’s controls failed to challenge the story until the losses became fatal.

This was not confidence operating alone. It was confidence combined with weak oversight, complex information and unreliable feedback.

Confidence is socially useful

Overconfidence persists partly because it can improve a person’s status.

Confident people speak sooner and make cleaner recommendations. They appear decisive. In meetings, recruitment and leadership contests, this creates an advantage before accuracy can be tested.

Organizations therefore face a design problem. If certainty is rewarded more quickly than judgment, people learn to display certainty. The culture may claim to value truth while promoting the person least inconvenienced by doubt.

The answer is not to fill every meeting with nervous disclaimers. Businesses need people who can act under uncertainty. But action and certainty are not the same thing.

A capable decision-maker can say, ‘I believe this is the best option, with roughly 70% confidence. These are the assumptions, and this is what would change my view.’

That is not indecision. It is risk management expressed in complete sentences.

How to improve calibration

Start by recording important predictions. Give them probabilities and review the outcomes. Over time, you will discover whether your 80% means 80%, 55% or ‘I would strongly prefer this to happen.’

Write down the assumptions behind major decisions. Invite someone to identify missing information rather than merely argue the opposite case. Reward people who update their views when evidence changes.

Finally, review near misses and lucky successes. A favorable outcome does not automatically validate the process that produced it.

Confidence is valuable when it reflects evidence. When it does not, it is merely a persuasive feeling with access to the budget.

Further reading

• Unskilled and Unaware of It (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology via PubMed) - The original Kruger and Dunning paper on performance and inaccurate self-assessment.
• The Dunning–Kruger Effect Revisited (Nature Human Behaviour) - Examines the mechanisms and statistical questions behind the well-known effect.
• Known Unknowns: A Critical Determinant of Confidence and Calibration (Management Science) - Shows why considering missing information can be more useful than merely arguing the opposite case.
• Report into the Collapse of Barings Bank (UK Board of Banking Supervision via GOV.UK) - The official inquiry into the controls, supervision and management failures behind Barings’ collapse.
• The Challenger Accident: Flaws in the Decision-Making Process (NASA) - The Rogers Commission’s account of incomplete information, communication failures and managerial judgment.

The first is merit: talent, judgement, persistence and hard work.

The second is luck: timing, circumstances, introductions and opportunities nobody could fully control.

Most arguments try to decide which explanation is correct. A more useful answer is that we need both—but at different moments.

We overcount our own contribution

People are unreliable accountants of shared effort.

Ask collaborators what percentage of a project they completed and the combined answer can exceed 100 percent. Couples do the same with housework. Curiously, they may also overestimate their share of arguments and mess.

This is not simply boasting. We experience all our own effort but see only fragments of everyone else’s. Our late nights are memories. Other people’s late nights are a completed document in the morning.

The same bias shapes the stories we tell about success. We can recall the work because we performed it. We struggle to see the fortunate conditions surrounding it because they did not feel like events.

The right teacher, a growing market, a timely introduction or a manager who noticed our ability can quietly alter a career. Once the career succeeds, those moments are edited into a tidy narrative about perseverance.

Small advantages compound

The source material uses youth hockey as an example. Players born early in the selection year have often been overrepresented in elite leagues.

At first, the advantage is modest. Older children may be slightly bigger and faster than younger children in the same age group. Coaches interpret this as greater potential, so they provide more playing time, competition and instruction.

A temporary difference in maturity becomes a real difference in skill.

Business careers compound in much the same way. Someone receives an interesting project, which gives them experience, which makes them suitable for the next project. Eventually, the accumulated advantage looks like evidence that they were always the obvious choice.

They may have earned every step while still benefiting from the first one.

Luck matters more when competition is fierce

When thousands of highly capable candidates compete for a few positions, tiny random differences become decisive.

A slightly better interview, a familiar piece of experience or the order in which applications are reviewed can change the result. This does not mean the winners lack merit. It means several different groups of winners might have been defensible.

Organisations often treat selection as proof of a large difference between candidates. In reality, it may reveal a narrow decision made among people of similar quality.

This should make leaders more careful about copying the visible characteristics of previous winners. What looks like a proven success profile may merely be the biography of whoever happened to get through.

Delusion helps before the result

There is, however, a benefit to underestimating luck.

People invest more effort when they believe their actions will determine the outcome. A fully realistic assessment of the odds might discourage a founder, creator or applicant before they develop the ability required to succeed.

Confidence keeps people in motion. They practise, publish, apply and learn. Each action creates another opportunity for luck to interact with preparation.

The useful delusion is not believing that success is guaranteed. It is believing that effort can improve the odds enough to justify continuing.

Realism matters after the result

The psychology that supports ambition can become unpleasant once success arrives.

If winners credit everything to merit, status starts to feel morally deserved. They may assume people with worse outcomes showed less ability or effort. They may also mistake favourable market conditions for brilliant strategy.

This is commercially dangerous. A company that confuses a tailwind with an engine will make confident plans for weather it does not control.

It is also a leadership problem. Leaders who remember luck are more likely to invest in training, widen access and give unconventional candidates meaningful opportunities. They understand that potential often develops after someone is trusted, not conveniently before.

Use two stories

During the attempt, use the agency story:

My choices matter. I can improve. I can create more opportunities.

After the result, use the accuracy story:

My choices mattered, but support, timing and chance mattered too.

The first story produces action. The second produces perspective.

Be delusional enough to attempt difficult work. Then be realistic enough to remember that your success was not a solo production, however prominent your name appears in the credits.

Further reading

• Don’t Underestimate the Power of Luck When It Comes to Success in Business (Harvard Business Review) - Explores how managers misattribute business outcomes and underestimate randomness.
• Does Success Come Mostly from Talent, Hard Work—or Luck? (Scientific American) - A concise examination of effort, circumstances, gratitude and the limits of self-made success stories.
• Better to Be Talented or Lucky? (Harvard Gazette) - Examines why talent alone cannot explain exceptional fame and success.
• What Drives Success, Hard Work or Luck? (Greater Good Magazine) - Connects luck awareness with gratitude, generosity and more equitable interpretations of success.
• Why the Belief in Meritocracy Is So Pervasive (Trends in Cognitive Sciences) - Reviews psychological explanations for why people favour merit-based accounts of outcomes.

This is usually followed by several unspoken conditions. The truth should arrive at a convenient time, support the current strategy and avoid upsetting anybody responsible for the current strategy.

Ideally, it should also fit onto one slide.

Tim Banting offers a more practical model. If a friend has spinach between their teeth, you tell them. But you tell them privately.

It is a small metaphor for a large business problem: how to combine honesty with discretion.

Tim has spent much of his career solving that problem. His route took him from military communications during the Cold War through enterprise telephony, Cisco, Microsoft, industry research and eventually his own analyst firm, So What Now What?

The path sounds coherent when summarised. Most careers do. We remove the uncertainty, abandoned directions and badly timed training courses, then draw a neat line through the successful bits.

The reality was less orderly and more useful.

Weak signals are not conclusions

Tim’s early work placed him alongside military analysts who assembled fragments of information into broader pictures.

The process was not glamorous. There were no cocktails, car chases or watches containing small explosives. Analysts studied weak signals and tried to understand how they related.

One observation rarely meant much. Several observations, combined with context, could reveal a change in capability, behaviour or intent.

Modern businesses face a similar task.

A competitor changes its pricing. A product leader leaves. A company begins hiring people with unfamiliar skills. Customers start asking for a capability that used to sit outside the category. A vendor acquires a small firm nobody had previously considered interesting.

Each item is information. None is automatically insight.

The analyst’s job is to connect the evidence without turning it into a decorative framework for an opinion already held.

This is harder than it sounds because organisations often reward certainty more readily than curiosity. A confident answer travels quickly. A careful explanation containing conditions and probabilities may be regarded as insufficiently executive.

The difficulty is that reality remains stubbornly conditional, even after the typography has been improved.

Ask what changes next

Tim named his company So What Now What? because much market research stops at the first question: what happened?

A product was launched. A company was acquired. A market grew. An executive used the word “platform” repeatedly while standing near a large screen.

The useful questions come afterwards.

So what does this change?

Now what should a customer, competitor or investor do?

Answering those questions requires more than summarising announcements. It requires knowledge of the technology, the customer’s problem, the commercial model and the organisation attempting to deliver it.

Tim saw this clearly during the transition from traditional telephony to IP-based communications.

The established telecoms industry valued exceptional reliability. Systems evolved slowly because reliability was the product. Early IP telephony appeared less mature and occasionally was. Some hardware became warm in use. Early soft phones reproduced the layout of plastic telephones on computer screens, allowing users to press simulated buttons with a mouse.

Humanity had developed graphical computing and used it to make a telephone slightly more irritating.

Yet IP telephony had a structural advantage. Voice and data could share infrastructure. Software features could be released more quickly. Products could improve through frequent iteration rather than occasional hardware cycles.

The newcomer did not need to match the incumbent immediately on every measure. It changed which measures mattered.

The product is not the whole business

Tim joined Geotel just as Cisco acquired it, placing him inside a remarkable commercial system.

Cisco had strong products, but it also had an exceptional sales organisation, an extensive partner network, technical certifications and a repeatable method for acquiring companies.

It could partner with several young firms, observe which gained market traction and then decide whether to build, buy or continue the relationship. External companies absorbed the earliest risk. Cisco selected technologies that could fit its broader machine and scale through its channels.

This is an important lesson in technology markets. Products do not compete alone.

They arrive with sales coverage, distribution, financing, implementation skills, brand trust and relationships. A technically elegant product can lose to one that is easier to buy, deploy and support.

Strong commercial machines create their own risks. Portfolios expand. Teams find increasingly precise segments requiring slightly different products. Complexity accumulates one reasonable decision at a time.

Cisco once had a broad selection of IP phones offering different buttons, screens and accessories. Each probably had an internal justification. Collectively, they could make choosing a telephone feel like a procurement transformation programme.

Growth often produces this effect. Companies begin by solving customer problems and eventually start solving the problem of having many internal product teams.

Trust requires the possibility of disagreement

Tim later worked in market intelligence inside Cisco and Microsoft before moving to the analyst side.

That shift exposed a tension in commercial research.

The client pays for the analysis. The client may also dislike the analysis.

Some managers wonder why an analyst they fund has not ranked their company first. But if payment automatically produced praise, the research would have limited value. Everyone could declare themselves a leader and return to more pressing matters, such as redesigning the quadrant.

An analyst earns trust by being willing to disagree. The manner of disagreement matters.

Public criticism can attract attention but make improvement less likely. Private criticism gives the company room to examine the problem without first defending itself before an audience.

That is the spinach test.

Tell the client what is strong. Explain what genuinely differentiates the business. Then identify the flaw before customers or competitors do it more expensively.

Honesty without discretion may become theatre. Discretion without honesty becomes paid reassurance.

The balance is commercially valuable because strategic failure often begins with the quiet disappearance of dissent. Once employees learn that bad news is punished, executives receive increasingly cheerful reports about increasingly serious problems.

The organisation becomes aligned because everybody with an alternative view has stopped talking.

Chief executives create the weather

Tim’s experience at Cisco and Microsoft also showed how a chief executive influences thousands of people who may never meet them.

John Chambers created a Cisco culture strongly focused on customers and partners. Steve Ballmer brought intense energy and competitive urgency to Microsoft. Their behaviour travelled through management layers because people noticed what attracted attention, approval and promotion.

This is how leaders shape culture.

Not through value statements, which frequently sound as though they were written by a committee attempting to avoid a decision. They shape culture through repeated reactions.

What happens when someone brings bad news?

What questions are asked after a failure?

Who gets promoted: the person who identifies a risk or the person who protects the preferred story?

The chief executive creates the weather. Everyone else learns whether to carry an umbrella, build a shelter or insist that the rain is a strategic form of sunshine.

AI needs judgment, not faith

Tim applies the same analytical caution to artificial intelligence.

He sees practical value in tools that generate software, create flexible interfaces and help organise personal workflows. But he separates utility from economic justification.

A technology can be useful without every investment being wise. It can transform an industry while destroying capital in several enthusiastic corners of that industry. The internet managed both.

AI also carries physical and operational costs. Models depend on data centres, chips, energy, cooling and continuing investment. Businesses must address privacy, regulation, data quality and validation. Generated material still requires people who understand enough to recognise when a confident answer is wrong.

This is not an argument for dismissing AI. It is an argument for treating it like technology rather than weather from the gods.

Ask what task improves. Measure the outcome. Include the full cost. Keep experienced people close enough to detect nonsense.

Automation without judgment can produce errors more quickly, which is technically a productivity gain but rarely one celebrated in the annual report.

Build depth and range

Tim’s career advice is to become T-shaped.

The vertical part represents deep expertise in a serious domain. The horizontal part represents communication, collaboration, selling and the ability to work across boundaries.

Depth creates authority. Breadth allows that knowledge to travel.

This matters because products and categories do not remain still. Telephony became software. Voice, video and messaging converged. Unified communications moved towards contact centres and customer experience. AI is now changing how users interact with all of them.

Nobody can produce a reliable map of an entire career before starting it.

A better approach is to develop skills that help when the map changes: observe carefully, learn deeply, communicate clearly and become trusted enough to deliver an uncomfortable conclusion.

The future rarely becomes obvious at once. It arrives through weak signals, awkward early products and changes in customer behaviour.

The trick is to notice before the explanation becomes fashionable.

And, occasionally, to mention the spinach.

Further reading

• Cultivating Everyday Courage — Harvard Business Review
• How to Disagree with Someone More Powerful than You — Harvard Business Review
• AI investment bubble inflated by trio of dilemmas — Reuters Breakingviews
• Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water — Associated Press
• Walmart and other US companies want to build a pipeline of skilled tradespeople — Associated Press
• Deflating the fear of AI — Economist Education

The audience may have questions. They may even have urgent problems. But first they must hear about the company history, the global office footprint and several products that are not relevant to anything currently happening in the building.

The deck must be completed. It has apparently travelled a long way.

Mark Coxon offers a better definition of success: the objective of a presentation is not completion. It is connection.

That idea reaches beyond sales technique. It points towards a larger change in audiovisual technology. The future of AV will not be determined solely by improvements in resolution, bandwidth, automation or artificial intelligence. It will depend on whether the industry can connect those capabilities to useful human and business outcomes.

An Accidental Career

Mark did not begin with a carefully designed AV career plan. He considered veterinary work and studied biomedical engineering before switching to zoology. At one stage, his imagined future involved field biology and counting fish in Arizona streams.

He eventually took a job selling IBM equipment to IT managers. The training was largely about finding inventory rather than understanding every technical detail. Customers nevertheless asked technical questions, as customers have an inconvenient habit of doing.

Mark developed a practical method. If he did not know, he admitted it. He found somebody who knew the answer. Then he asked why the customer cared.

That final question transformed the information.

A salesperson can memorise a processor specification and repeat it accurately. That is useful, but limited. Understanding why the specification matters to a graphics company turns the same fact into advice.

Curiosity became the consistent element in a career that later covered residential AV, museums, manufacturing and workplace experience. It allowed Mark to acquire technical knowledge without pretending he had always possessed it.

This is commercially important because sales cultures often reward the appearance of certainty. Yet customers rarely need a flawless performance of knowing everything. They need somebody honest enough not to invent the answer and capable enough to find it.

Technical Knowledge Creates Freedom

Mark began his AV career in smaller integration businesses. There was no large team of sales engineers waiting to translate promises into designs.

He had to understand the products, assemble bills of materials, communicate with project managers and eventually show the customer how the finished system worked.

He could not walk away after the order was signed. He would see whether the work survived contact with reality.

That creates accountability. It is easy to make confident promises when somebody else will handle the final conversation. It is harder when you know you will be standing in the completed room, pressing the button and waiting with the customer.

Technical credibility also allows a salesperson to explain trade-offs honestly. The most expensive option may have four capabilities the customer genuinely needs. If so, explain them. If those capabilities do not matter, recommend the cheaper option.

That can reduce the immediate order value. It also demonstrates that the advice is not simply a price list wearing a polo shirt.

The longer-term commercial objective is to become involved before the customer has selected the product and requested a quote. Trust is what earns that earlier invitation.

The Margin Is Not in the Mystery

Professional AV once relied heavily on information asymmetry. Product information was gated, pricing was protected and customers could not easily compare alternatives.

Mark recalls a supplier whose recommended price for the same product changed according to the value of the customer's house. The hardware remained identical, but the postcode apparently performed a substantial firmware update.

This approach is sometimes romanticised as putting the margin in the mystery.

Mystery is not a customer benefit. It is simply a method of making the transaction harder to inspect.

Today's buyer can research products, compare prices and arrive with a preferred solution before contacting a salesperson. This does not make salespeople irrelevant. It changes where they must add value.

Mark suggests asking the customer to explain how they reached their current decision.

It is a respectful question. It acknowledges that the buyer has already done some work. It also reveals the initial problem, the alternatives considered and the assumptions used to eliminate them.

There may be a significant gap. There may not. The requested product could still be entirely correct.

Either way, the customer finishes with a clearer decision. If the conversation was valuable, the salesperson may be invited into the next project before the research begins.

That is considerably more defensible than possessing a secret PDF.

Presentations Should Create Conversation

A presentation deck remains useful. It provides a structure and ensures that the meeting can continue if the audience offers nothing beyond polite blinking.

But the deck is not the objective.

If somebody interrupts after five minutes with a genuine business problem, the presentation has started doing its job. The skilled presenter notices the interest and follows it.

This means watching people rather than reading slides. Who has leaned forward? Which phrase created recognition? Where did several stakeholders exchange a look suggesting that somebody has finally described the problem they have been discussing for six months?

The ability to change direction depends on preparation. Someone who understands only the script will experience questions as a threat. Someone who understands the subject can treat questions as useful information.

Connection is therefore not the soft, friendly alternative to commercial discipline. It is a way of discovering where commercial value actually exists.

The Connected Workplace Opportunity

For years, AV discussed convergence with IT. That shift is now established. AV signals move across networks, meeting platforms form part of business infrastructure and integrators regularly work with IT departments.

The next convergence may involve business information.

Facilities teams hold occupancy data. IT sees meeting-room performance. HR has workforce and access information. Security monitors threats. Sales operates through the CRM. Operations depends on supply-chain and delivery systems.

Each team can be well informed while the organisation remains fragmented.

A business disruption does not stay obediently inside one department. A supply problem can affect operations, customer delivery dates, forecasts, staffing and sales communications. If systems remain isolated, people must manually discover and distribute every connection.

AV integrators already work at an interesting intersection. They understand rooms, devices, networks and collaboration. They may have relationships across AV, IT, facilities and the wider business.

This creates an opportunity to become something broader: an integrator of workplace experiences and information.

Capturing it will require more than adding another category to the equipment list. Integrators will need capabilities in software, data, experience design and business analysis. They will need to understand what the organisation is trying to achieve before deciding what technology belongs in the room.

Human-Centred Is Still Technical

None of this means technical expertise becomes less important.

The network must work. The audio must be intelligible. The system must be secure, supportable and reliable. Human-centred design is not an invitation to replace engineering with encouraging thoughts.

It changes the starting point.

Begin with the people, the work and the outcome. Then apply technical expertise to build the appropriate experience.

Mark describes this as moving from inputs and outputs to impact and outcomes. The inputs and outputs remain. They now have a job.

The future AV professional will need a demanding combination of technical depth, commercial judgement, curiosity and humility. Technology will continue changing, and customers will continue arriving with complicated organisations rather than conveniently isolated rooms.

The competitive advantage will not come from access to equipment that other companies can also purchase.

It will come from knowing what to connect, why it matters and how it should improve the working lives of the people expected to use it.

The future of AV is not less technical.

It is more human, which is considerably harder.

Further reading

• Create a Conversation, Not a Presentation — Harvard Business Review
• A Great Sales Pitch Hinges on the Right Story — Harvard Business Review
• Tech at Work: How to Get the Most Out of Digital Collaboration Tools — Harvard Business Review
• How Johnson & Johnson Transformed Its Corporate Business-Technology Operating Model — McKinsey & Company
• Making Hybrid Work Human — Economist Impact

Before entering audiovisual technology, Freeman served in the United States Navy as a P-3 aircrewman involved in submarine hunting and rescue swimming. After an injury ended his ability to fly, he studied civil engineering, painted commercial signs, trained as an aircraft mechanic and worked with fiber-optic infrastructure.

None of this was part of a polished plan to become an AV entrepreneur. It did, however, produce a valuable collection of capabilities: mechanical reasoning, visual thinking, communications knowledge and the confidence to diagnose unfamiliar systems.

His entry into video conferencing began during a cable installation near Seattle. He saw the wiring behind a customer’s entertainment system, reorganized it and was asked for his résumé. Soon afterward, he had to choose between joining Boeing as a line mechanic and working for a small video-conferencing company.

He chose video.

Learning from the installation site

Freeman entered the industry during the ISDN era, when a video call could require six digital telephone lines operating together. The technology was expensive and frequently difficult, creating a useful habitat for field engineers who could make incompatible systems cooperate.

He worked through the transition from ISDN to IP networks and from dedicated hardware codecs to software-based systems. He estimates that he personally completed close to 3,000 installations.

This gave him a perspective that product teams often lack. He saw technology after it left the demonstration room.

A product can perform beautifully on its own and still become a nuisance when installed with everything else. Connectors are inaccessible. Documentation is incomplete. Assumptions about networks, furniture and users prove optimistic. The customer, unreasonably, expects the room to work.

Freeman eventually founded Video 360 to build products from the field engineer’s point of view. Its work included an early native USB pan-tilt-zoom camera and a PTZ camera containing an Intel i5 computer.

The broader business lesson is simple: implementation knowledge belongs in product design.

Companies often ask frontline employees for feedback after the key decisions have been made. By then, the task is not collaboration but damage reporting. Engineers, installers and support teams should be involved earlier because they encounter repeated friction before it appears in financial results.

When ‘good enough’ stops being good

Freeman is critical of the technology industry’s willingness to accept ‘good enough.’

There is, of course, a sound commercial case for it. Simpler and cheaper products can make technology accessible to far more people. Technical superiority is irrelevant if customers cannot afford, understand or deploy it.

But ‘good enough’ can also become a polite phrase for work nobody is proud of.

The challenge is distinguishing valuable engineering from perfection that serves mainly the engineer. Technical excellence without adoption creates an impressive niche. Adoption without sufficient quality creates disappointed customers and a vigorous market in replacement products.

Freeman’s instinct is to keep improving the mechanism, much as he does with a classic car. The goal is not perfection for its own sake, but a system that behaves properly in the real world.

AI that can admit ignorance

That philosophy now shapes Freeman’s work on AI-powered guides.

The idea began at the Roman Forum. Freeman could imagine what the ruined buildings once looked like, but his mother could not. He began considering an augmented-reality guide capable of recognizing a visitor’s location, explaining the site and showing historical reconstructions.

His team’s approach relies on curated, retrieval-based information. The system is constrained to approved material rather than being encouraged to improvise from the wider web. If the answer is absent, it can say it does not know.

This restraint matters in museums, stadiums, public spaces and other controlled environments. A fictional detail may be embarrassing in a historical guide. A fictional emergency route could be dangerous.

The work also emphasizes on-device processing, partly because many locations have limited connectivity and partly because local processing can provide faster responses without forcing every visitor through one central service.

Again, the product starts with operating conditions rather than an idealized technical diagram.

Experience as creative infrastructure

Freeman says he is now, in his late sixties, at his most creative. He is developing AI technology while also writing science fiction, having taught himself the structures of longer-form storytelling.

His career offers a useful alternative to the mythology that innovation belongs mainly to the young. Youth can provide speed and freedom from assumptions. Experience provides pattern recognition, judgment and a long catalogue of preventable errors.

Freeman has not stopped taking risks. He has become more deliberate about which risks deserve the effort.

Across submarines, aircraft, conference rooms, cameras and AI, the consistent habit is close observation. He stays near the mechanism, looks for what is actually happening and improves the system in front of him.

The future may be difficult to predict. Fortunately, there will always be work for people who can open the box and understand why it is not working.

Further reading

• How Your Company Can Encourage Innovation from All Employees (Harvard Business Review) - Explains why frontline employees often generate valuable product and process improvements.
• Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship (National Bureau of Economic Research) - Research challenging the assumption that successful technology entrepreneurship belongs mainly to the young.
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks (NeurIPS) - The foundational paper behind retrieval-augmented generation and grounding language models in external knowledge.
• Tired of AI doomsday tropes, Cohere CEO says his goal is technology that’s ‘additive to humanity’ (Associated Press) - A practical discussion of enterprise AI, hallucinations and retrieval-augmented systems.
• ‘I’m unable to’: How generative AI chatbots respond when asked for the latest news (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism) - Examines the reliability limits of general-purpose chatbots when factual provenance matters.

It is attractive because it treats transformation as a procurement exercise. Procurement has forms. Transformation has people, politics and the occasional department defending a spreadsheet from 2011.

The more difficult truth is that AI creates little value if an organisation continues to work in exactly the same way.

Julian Phillips, who leads XTG inside AVI-SPL and works on the company's AI strategy, compares the current shift with earlier general-purpose technologies. Electricity did not instantly transform factories. Businesses initially applied electric power to systems designed around steam. The larger gains emerged when managers redesigned factories, processes and roles around what distributed electricity made possible.

AI is likely to demand a similar organisational response, compressed into a much shorter period.

Automating the Wrong Thing

Most organisations contain processes that exist because they existed yesterday. A task passes through several departments, gathers approvals and generates duplicate records. Nobody designed the whole system. It accumulated.

Adding AI may accelerate individual steps without improving the result.

A summary appears faster. A report is drafted automatically. An email is written with impressive politeness. Yet the customer still waits because responsibility remains fragmented and the final decision requires approval from somebody attending a quarterly off-site.

The useful questions are therefore not limited to what AI can automate. Leaders should ask:

• What outcome is the process meant to produce?
• Which tasks genuinely require human judgement?
• Where do delays and errors enter the system?
• Which steps could disappear entirely?
• What new service becomes possible when the cost of analysis or creation falls?

The last question is especially important. Efficiency is valuable, but widely available tools rarely produce a lasting advantage if every competitor uses them in the same way.

Protect the New from the Old

Phillips learned another useful lesson while building specialist propositions inside larger businesses: new ventures often need protection from the operating rhythm of the core company.

A sales organisation rewarded for today's established products will naturally focus on those products. It may support innovation warmly, provided innovation does not interfere with the quarter.

This informed the creation of XTG as a specialist experiential-technology group. Its work can require early collaboration with architects, corporate real estate firms, content creators and clients planning major projects years in advance. That is a different commercial model from responding to a conventional integration opportunity.

The specialist group gains scale and delivery capability from the larger company. In return, it develops expertise and opportunities the core business might not create alone.

AI initiatives may need the same structure: a focused team with authority to challenge current processes, access to operating expertise and responsibility for commercial outcomes.

This should not become an innovation theatre company furnished mainly with beanbags. The team must eventually move useful changes into the business.

Get Big, Get Niche, or Get Out

Phillips has long advised AV integrators to get big, get niche, or get out.

The phrase applies to many fragmented industries.

Large providers can offer geographic reach, broad services and investment capacity. Specialists can dominate a valuable category through expertise and focus. Medium-sized generalists risk being neither scalable nor distinctive.

AI may intensify that pressure. Large companies can distribute investment across more operations and customers. Niche firms can use AI to deepen scarce knowledge and improve specialist delivery. Generic providers may simply produce generic work more efficiently.

That is useful, but not necessarily defensible.

Acquisition is not an automatic answer. Phillips observes that one plus one in a merger often equals one. Revenue overlaps, customers leave and expected efficiencies prove unexpectedly shy. A strong acquisition should add capability, access or reach that would be difficult to build organically.

Scale without strategic purpose is just additional administration.

The Human Work Starts Now

AI strategy is ultimately a human redesign project.

Leaders must decide where the technology belongs, what risks are acceptable and how work should change. They must also give employees a credible explanation of what productivity gains are for.

If the entire proposition is that workers should document their jobs so fewer workers will be required, enthusiastic cooperation may be limited.

The more constructive approach is neither fantasy nor panic. Map the work. Find commercially meaningful problems. Build protected capacity to redesign processes. Involve the people who understand how those processes really operate. Then decide where the company intends to be distinct.

AI changes what is possible. It does not choose a strategy, repair a weak business model or remove the need for judgement.

Apparently, humans still have a role. It is simply the inconvenient one.

Further reading

• The Enterprise AI Blueprint (The Economist) - Explains why firms need redesigned workflows, skills and organisational structures to realise returns from AI.
• Generative AI at Work (Stanford Graduate School of Business) - Provides field evidence on how generative AI affects productivity, learning and workers with different experience levels.
• The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies (National Bureau of Economic Research) - Examines why technologies such as AI require complementary investment in processes, business models and human capital.
• The Frontiers of Corporate Innovation (The Economist) - Considers why efficiency alone is unlikely to create a durable AI advantage and why firms must pursue genuine innovation.
• Why Some Workers Are Embracing AI While Others Won't Use It, According to a New Gallup Poll (Associated Press) - Explores the practical, ethical and privacy concerns shaping employee adoption of workplace AI.