Editor’s Note: This article stems from Commercial Integrator’s AV-over-IP Deep Dive report, which examines how AV-over-IP is being designed and deployed today by leveraging tools from Audinate and other top suppliers.
The conversation around AV-over-IP has moved past the basics. Getting signals from point A to point B is table stakes. What matters now is whether customers can choose the best products for each job, know those products will work together, and monitor, manage and secure everything on the network. That’s the broader definition of interoperability that Audinate is pursuing.
Interoperability Starts with Customer Choice
For Josh Rush, CMO of Audinate, interoperability begins with a simple customer demand. “When you go out and talk to customers, the thing you hear over and over again is that they want the flexibility to pick and choose the best products for the project that they’re working on,” he says.
That flexibility only holds if products truly work together, and Rush draws a distinction worth noting: There’s a difference between interoperability that’s genuinely guaranteed and tested end to end and interoperability that’s more conceptual depending on how manufacturers implement a given protocol. Beyond signal transport, he also points to the rest of the AV-over-IP stack: Can you monitor and manage your devices? Can you secure them? That’s the fuller picture that the company is focused on.
Audinate AV-over-IP is Built for Commercial Install
Commercial install has grown to be Audinate’s largest segment, covering everything across the entire signal chain. Dante Director Pro, launched last year, was specifically designed for enterprise customers. It lets teams remotely monitor and manage their Dante network, set up different domains, control access and permissions, and address IT department priorities like single sign-on and Dante Managed API access for integration with existing management and monitoring tools. On the integrator side, Audinate also launched a line of AVIO adapters built from the ground up for the installed market, with two-channel and four-channel versions. They include Phoenix connectors, the ClickGrid mounting system for flexible placement and daisy-chaining to save switch ports.
Training is another area of focus. More than 300,000 people have come through the Dante certification program, and more end users are joining the ranks of system integrators who receive this training. The feedback Audinate hears is that it’s a remarkably valuable tool: Once a Dante-enabled system is installed, integrators can point customers to the program to learn more about the system and how to manage it.
Audinate on Where AV-over-IP Goes Next
As the Dante ecosystem continues to expand, the value for integrators isn’t simply having more products to choose from. It’s having the flexibility to build systems around the requirements of each project without being locked into a single manufacturer’s portfolio. But that flexibility also makes management, monitoring and security increasingly important as deployments grow.
That’s where Audinate sees the next phase of AV-over-IP taking shape: not just moving signals across a network, but giving integrators the interoperability, visibility and control needed to manage increasingly sophisticated systems. More than 700 manufacturers have licensed Dante; there are over 5,000 products on the market; and there are more than a million units shipping every year. It adds up to an ecosystem built around choice — and the tools to make that choice practical at scale.
Watch the full interview with Josh Rush of Audinate on the latest AV-over-IP trends, embedded below.
