Broadcast from its headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, on February 16, QSC hosted, Activate, Winter 2022, a live virtual event that by all accounts could have been staged from up the coast in Cupertino. While attendees were waiting for the event to start, "hello from" filled the chat spanning the globe.
Jatan Shah, QSC's recently appointed president and Chief Operating Officer, took to the stage to introduce himself and set the expectations about the exciting new announcements. Shah joined QSC in 2010 and held various leadership roles. "And during this time working with our entire executive team, transform the company from an audio company to an audio, video, and control platform company."
Shah reflected on his roles before joining QSC. But he said it was while he was at the University of Michigan, researching MEMS technology (micro-electro-mechanical systems) when it was on the verge of a breakthrough, that he learned two important lessons about disruptive technologies. "Number one, for a technology to be impactful, it needs to solve what may seem unsolvable to others," Shah said. "And number two, in order to reach a truly disruptive state, it needs to drive that impact on a massive scale."
[ QSC Names Jatan Shah President and Chief Operating Officer ]
Disruptive Technologies
Shah set the stage for anyone not familiar with QSC's Q-SYS platform. "Q-SYS is a cloud managed audio video and control platform that enables an ecosystem of partners and industry technologies. Essentially Q-SYS is solving seemingly unsolvable problems by integrating disparate set of technologies and doing so at scale at the software level."
The event's theme was scaling up and scaling out with the Q-SYS platform, around which 15 new hardware and software products were unveiled.
"Imagine scaling up the capabilities of your system without adding or swapping your core, but instead deploying a simple software license," Shah explained. "We'll also be sharing new scaling out capabilities in the collaboration space." Five new Q-SYS products for the meeting room were announced. "And when combined with the touch screens and the cameras that we launched back in October provides a complete user-friendly experience for everyone on the call, as well as inside the room." Scaling out includes new products for both indoor and outdoor spaces. "Also, we are going to show you more ways to integrate your analog devices, which will in turn, allow you to choose where our new processors go—in a single room or across multiple rooms through centralized processing," he continued.
[ Exclusive Interview: QSC Creates Two Independent Divisions ]
Maximum Scale
"The reality is that any platform that hopes to achieve maximum scale needs to be able to reach beyond itself," Shah said. "And that is exactly what Q-SYS is doing right now. Besides Q-SYS OS and our native products, Q-SYS was fundamentally designed to nurture a thriving ecosystem of partners, developers, and open-source technologies to drive as much innovation into the platform as possible. Innovation, such as AI, machine learning, device automation, smart AV experiences." Shah explained that QSC is excited that the industry embraces all of these new technologies. "Especially because Q-SYS is poised to uniquely integrate support and capture all of that value and deliver to your next system. Q-SYS is about to become bigger than just QSC," concluded Shah.
And the Drum Roll Please
QSC’s Patrick Heyn, senior director of marketing; Nathan Makaryk, senior training manager; and James Martin, senior applications engineer took to the stage to introduce the 15 new products, explain how they fit into the overall Q-SYS ecosystem, and the benefits of each.
Check out the new product releases:
[ First Network Microphone and Loudspeakers Native to Q-SYS ]
[ Network I/O Expanders for Q-SYS ]
[ QSC Premium Outdoor Landscape Loudspeaker System to its AcousticDesign Series ]
