Along with our annual Top 50 Systems Integrators feature, we polled a selection of leading firms on industry hot topics.
SCN: What vertical markets and/or technologies exhibited the most growth for you in 2020?
Brian Fichter, Vice President of Visual Collaboration, Carousel Industries
Customer budgets have been disrupted, project priorities have shifted, and uncertainty has increased for all. Carousel has, however, withstood the pandemic and through our focus on innovation, customer success and collaboration, we’ve identified and capitalized on opportunities for new services to help clients automate workflows to support a growing remote workforce. Given our deep capabilities in data center services such as business continuity and disaster recovery, we bring a strong focus on business resilience unique in the AV space.
Joseph Yost, CTS, Director of Engineering, CCS Presentation Systems
Due to COVID-19 and the requirement that many employees work remotely, CCS has seen huge growth in unified communication solutions. Our partnership with Crestron has made keeping up with this increased demand easy. Whether customers use Teams, Zoom, or BYOD, the Crestron Flex family of products is always the best answer.
Brad Peterson, CEO, Level 3 Audiovisual
We have seen growth in the use of collaboration platforms and software videoconferencing as it is becoming a requirement for teams to work together. More spaces in the corporate campus are requiring video-enabled systems to connect with vendors and peers, and at-home systems are needing to improve the audio experience with quality headsets/personal audioconferencing devices.
Shiro Ando, CTO, New Era Technology
In 2020, New Era Technology experienced the most growth in the healthcare and financial markets. New Era’s collaboration technology solutions for voice and video (both cloud and on-prem) and security around these solutions had a major uptick in 2020. New Era’s CloudBlu “as a Service” solution offerings also experienced growth.
Tony Griffiths, CTS, CQT, Department Manager – Tempe AV, IES Communications
Data centers, audiovisual, security, and wireless technologies exhibited the most growth for IES in 2020. We have enjoyed an explosive growth in audiovisual in the transportation vertical market, particularly in airport projects. We also saw a sharp rise in mixed use projects consisting of retail stores and residential space in the same building.
Rob Gilfillan, President, Cenero
We saw growth in the higher education and healthcare verticals. Our higher ed clients were able to upgrade technology and incorporate more video collaboration solutions while the students were not on campus. For healthcare, we saw a significant increase in the need to upgrade meeting spaces to include video. We created video solutions that were simple, reliable, and consistent so that doctors could easily conduct telemedicine appointments.
Anthony Cuellar, SVP of Global Marketing, Diversified
There’s no question government business globally has seen the most growth. As all levels of government from country to state to local responded to the dynamic nature of the virus, communication and collaboration technology is required for responding to situational awareness. Our specialty groups in federal solutions and mission-critical environments have grown providing innovative solutions around command and control and data center implementations. Further, the streaming/OTT media and entertainment industry has grown due to everyone staying and working from home. Our media and entertainment specialty has benefited from that new normal and grown through providing IP and emerging control room technologies, digital asset management, and general media workflow expansion required by the new media and OTT content providers that we all watch on demand every day.
Matt McClain, Director of Marketing, Key Code Media
We've seen the largest areas of growth in the higher education, city government, and house of worship verticals.
Jeff Stoebner, President and CEO, AVI Systems
In the past year, we have seen the most growth in the education market, fueled by the scramble to adapt classrooms for distance/hybrid learning.
