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Within the AV industry, the name Black Box is synonymous with excellence in manufacturing. Fewer people will immediately associate Black Box with its robust, global consulting and integration business.
Alan Kaye, CTS-D, director of AV engineering, and Brian Trampler, senior product and strategy manager, Modern Workplace at Black Box, recently sat down with Cindy Davis, brand and content director of AV Technology to discuss the AV division of Black Box Network Services.
“Black Box is historically known as a manufacturer of AV products, but this is a whole different services division that does the design, installation, maintenance, and support of everything that we have going on today,” Kaye said. “We handle everything from huddle rooms to auditorium spaces and large-venue-type of spaces and more."
The Best Bundle for the Job
Installation, equipment, and on-site support comprise conveniently bundled turnkey solutions for many Black Box clients. “We've put together several pre-bundled packages for customers to review, and they come in huddle, small, medium, large spaces," Kaye explained. "They can be altered, depending on the size of the room and needs. There are a lot of packages, because we cover the major hardware manufacturers like Cisco, Poly, Logitech, Yealink, Crestron, and so forth, and then the different platforms that they will work off of such as Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, Webex, or whatever they use.”
A Complete Solutions Provider
With eight separate technology groups within Black Box—AV among them—the company has access to a wide array of professionals to meet their clients’ needs. "During our process of discovery with the customer and doing a needs analysis of their requirements, we are completely vendor-neutral. We are going to give the best solution available to that customer," Kaye said. "In fact, our solutions group is a separate division from our products group, and there is complete independence in engineering a solution that meets the needs of the client."
“Obviously when you're going into a new building and doing all the Category cable pulling and so forth, there are other needs that kind of diverge off of that,” Kaye explained. “The technology groups all complement each other, and as a result, we're able to offer a total end-to-end solution much more than most companies out there.”
Trampler echoed this sentiment, “If we're talking to a customer about the digital workplace and their UC platform, obviously there's going to be an AV component there,” he said. “For example, if we're providing the Zoom meetings platform to somebody, could we also provide them the AV infrastructure and the Zoom Rooms integration?
Because of the depth of expertise, the Black Box team can offer more to the partnership with its clients. “We can take that initial product and add any of the other capabilities that we have for UC, for CX, or for the rooms themselves,” Trampler added. “We can help a company in an advisory, consultative capacity on how to get the best out of what tools they have and add on those capabilities, whether it's as a service or whether it's a part for that project.”
In addition to the breadth of expertise found between the technology groups, Black Box has 5,000 employees and physical locations in more than 35 countries worldwide, and is well-resourced to meet the requirements of large, multi-national contracts.
“We had a customer that was a large international conglomerate headquartered in Germany,” Kaye said. “When they found out that we had AV capabilities—design capabilities—they said, ‘Why wouldn't we go with someone else right within the same company?’ When we did our discovery, we provided a needs analysis on what they were looking for from an AV perspective and meeting room spaces, and we provided a design and a quote.”
AV as a Service
And when it comes to AV as a Service offerings, according to Trampler, consistency is of the utmost importance. “Our goal is to be able to offer that [AVaaS] in a model where it's complimentary to all of our other services,” Kaye said. “The project management that we would give our hyper data center customers is the same project management that they're going to get with an AV installer. The steps remain the same, the processes remain the same, and the way that we report out to our customers and clients remains the same.”
“As part of the AV as a Service, there's a three or five-year refresh cycle built into that service,” Trampler said. “If, in three years when a customer’s AV as a service is up, and they want to do a refresh, then we're able to up them to the next generation of equipment and design so that they're not losing a technological advancement.”
Seizing COVID Era Opportunities
While COVID-19 had a devastating impact on many corners of the AV industry globally, Kaye’s outlook on the lasting changes brought about by the pandemic is optimistic.
“There was a positive part—the proliferation of Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, and similar platforms. There was this whole convergence on how people can and still communicate remotely together and be productive,” Kaye said. “I've also seen a big change in the types of rooms that are being designed for corporate environments, the number of rooms, and the technology that's going into those spaces.” With AI-enabled cameras and audio, room control and automation, together these systems can provide analytics to help make informed decisions.
For Trampler, the transition to more connected, technologically sophisticated buildings has provided Black Box with a unique advantage. “In that building, when you walk into a conference room, it's not only monitoring how many people are coming in, but it can see that the ambient temperature in the room is going up because now it's occupied. Now let’s make sure that we're not over occupying that room based on standards that are now in place because of a hybrid workforce.”
“Being able to work with our connected buildings team, our structured cabling team, our network team, and our security team to make sure that all of these functions work in concert is very important to the customers that we're working with today,” Trampler concluded. “So we're not only coming in as an AV company; we truly are coming in as an IT infrastructure and services company that has multiple specialties under our belt.”
Click here to learn more about Black Box Services: Redefined Audio Visual Solutions and Integrations with Black Box.
About Black Box: A trusted IT integrator for more than four decades, Black Box delivers leading-edge technology solutions and premier services to businesses around the globe in every major industry. We have a dedicated AV Solution Engineering team that is skilled at building solutions for customers needing conference rooms, huddle spaces, operations centers, classrooms, auditoriums, and collaboration spaces.
Our custom design and consultancy services will provide you with the right product mix from leading partnerships including Crestron, Zoom Rooms, and WebEx that meet your video conferencing and collaboration needs.
