Quick Bio
Name: David Shamir
Position: Vice President of Product Management
Company: Atlona
Overtime: When he's not working, Shamir enjoys spending time with his children and family, weight training, photography, traveling, and creating music.
SCN: What is your position, and what does it entail? What are your responsibilities?
DAVID SHAMIR: My key responsibilities as vice president of product management are to oversee engineering and product development while leading Atlona’s global product and solutions strategy. I also closely collaborate with adjacent internal operations in marketing, procurement, warehousing, technical support, and quality assurance, as well as with external technology partners to negotiate joint ventures. These collaborative relationships are essential to driving new products and increasing Atlona’s footprint and market share.
SCN: How long have you been in this position?
DS: I was promoted to this role in September 2020 after serving as director of product management for five and a half years.
SCN: How has your background prepared you for your role?
DS: My core focus throughout my tenure as director of product management was to create the vision and strategies necessary to capture substantial market share through innovative products. This included introducing new processes and methodologies at Atlona that quickly took product ideas from concept to reality, and that led to a number of key product launches and new product lines that have shaped Atlona’s direction today.
I’m particularly proud of three major product line launches that moved Atlona into new areas and addressed emerging trends that would prepare our customers for changing AV environments. The first of these launches was the OmniStream AV over IP platform in 2016, which later led to the development of our All-IP Meeting Space solution, which was an industry first. OmniStream evolved from a base of video encoders and decoders to including audio and USB interface products, as well as a more streamlined family for light commercial projects.
Speaking of industry firsts, the Velocity AV control and management platform changed the control game by transitioning AV control and management to the IP network. In addition to bringing new benefits to integrators and end users for control flexibility, scalability, and redundancy, it was also the first AV control element to introduce true cloud elements. Velocity has also continued to evolve, and today includes room scheduling and asset management functions, plus a broader family of gateway servers to suit a more diverse array of AV environments.
The Omega Series of AV integration solutions for modern workspaces and meeting environments represents the third and most recent major product line launch I oversaw in my previous role. Omega is a family of wired and wireless collaboration and presentation products, including switchers and extenders, that has very rapidly evolved to become our largest product family.
In addition to managing these and other Atlona product launches, my background includes senior product management roles at Magnum Semiconductor, Harmonic, and Scopus Video Networks.
SCN: What are your short- and long-term goals?
DS: My main short-term goal is to help increase Atlona’s agility and responsiveness to rapidly evolving market needs. My new position combines previously separate product management and engineering leadership responsibilities into a single role. This will effectively streamline Atlona’s internal processes even further.
In the long term, I’ll be working with the engineering team to focus our product development toward the needs of IT admins. While Atlona builds products that serve their applications today, we need to partner with them and provide future AV solutions engineered with the same commitment to quality and innovation they require of their data and infrastructure. I want to provide these customers with all the tools and solutions they need to make their AV and IT systems more efficient and cost-effective.
SCN: What is the greatest challenge you face?
DS: Our main challenge will be to predict how the market will evolve in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and create solutions that align how people work, meet, and present. AV systems will need to remain very nimble in response to rapidly changing environments. Some people will choose to meet in socially distanced environments using minimal-touch or touch-free AV systems. Some will meet remotely via soft codec-based systems. Educational institutions will take a hybrid approach, teaching to a collection of students in both the classroom and remote settings. We need to provide solutions that can safely be used in meeting spaces and classrooms as utilized today and build future solutions that are in touch with tomorrow’s needs.
SCN: Where do you see the pro AV market heading?
DS: As remote learning, work-at-home, and hybrid working models become more prevalent, we believe that IT infrastructure will become even more important. IT is the basis for keeping everyone connected, and the AV market will increasingly require products that can live and operate on IT infrastructure.
SCN: Are there new initiatives we are likely to see from Atlona?
DS: While corporate and education remain our core verticals, we see continued growth taking shape for Atlona in the hospitality market. Casinos, for example, have seen the value of our AV and control over IP products to harness their existing data networks to route AV and networked control for signage and security.
SCN: How can systems contractors better position themselves to profit from products and/or services you have to offer?
DS: System integrators benefit from several exclusive capabilities with Atlona that will strengthen their positions in the market and win more business. Our Omega series offers unique capabilities and functionalities when it comes to USB and USB-C data routing within meeting spaces. Furthermore, Atlona’s universal presentation systems with wired and wireless casting capabilities allow contractors to offer comprehensive AV solutions in the meeting space that provide complete BYOD compatibility for laptops and popular mobile devices. Atlona’s feature-dense OmniStream portfolio, holistic AMS (Atlona Management System) for asset management, and Velocity control over IP also offer our customers the flexibility, robustness, and price-competitiveness required to succeed in today’s market conditions.
