Standardisation: One style for all

We must have standards, but would a-v suppliers and users also benefit from increased standardisation?

Standards are technical, measurable tests that can be applied to products, installations, a-v design and even individuals’ behaviour and/or knowledge.

Standardisation is both simpler and more complex; at its most basic level, it means things like the layout of the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals on a car, which have been standardised for the benefit of users, manufacturers and anyone else on or near a road.

When it comes to a-v, the problem with increased standardisation is that it can conflict with innovation. Standardise too early in the development of a technology and its application and the very act of doing so could curtail future growth.

‘Standardisation is, as a whole, good for customers,’ says Ian Vickerage, md of specialist distributor Imago. ‘There is much less messing around trying to make things that are not designed to work together work together, which the customer has to foot the bill for.

‘The trouble is that if we had standardised on MSDOS we would never have had Windows.’

Videoconferencing on point

As a major videoconferencing distributor, Imago is particularly exposed to the user problems that occur if systems are not standardised.

‘When you are using videoconferencing,’ says Vickerage, ‘you are trying to see and talk to people in real time, so if they are operating differently they cannot communicate. So unless you want to tell people that they can’t communicate with anyone using a different manufacturer’s product, you have to have a degree of standardisation.

‘People have to accept that they can’t have standardisation at the beginning of a technology’s development – that’s the price of innovation – but users don’t want to pay to resolve differences for differences’ sake.’

Because of its nature – a mix of real time communication and the carriage of video over IT networks – both videoconferencing standards and standardisation are a particularly fraught area. Although most of the standard definition (SD) equipment offered by different manufacturers is now interoperable, videoconferencing users with large numbers of meeting rooms and locations have tended to standardise their operations around a single vendor’s systems and management software.

Once users start to install more innovative high definition and telepresence systems ‘you see innovation being favoured at the expense of standardisation,’ says Vickerage.

Controls and room systems

Videoconferencing may be at the sharp end of the battle between innovation and standardisation, but the design of a-v room systems and the control software that runs them is also in the vanguard, with the proliferation of interface programmes and black boxes which allow different sources and displays to operate together coming under increasing criticism from users.

‘Corporate a-v systems are typically very over-engineered,’ suggests Paradigm AV chairman Greg Jeffreys. ‘If the IT sector owned it there would be some kind of web-based standard control interface that could be used virtually either on a touch panel or booted up on a laptop. That would be the way we would have had standardisation.’

Jeffreys’ argument is that corporate a-v came first, so it has evolved its own way of doing things. If it had developed after the IT sector came along, he ‘can’t see a scenario in which the IT channel didn’t own it.

‘A-V has managed to hang on to the business partly because it is akin to a craft or an artisanal process – there are a lot of technicalities involved and there is a consultative interplay that goes on. Designing an installation requires judgement on what is good and bad technically, and commercial knowledge of how systems work in the real world.’

There is also vested interest involved. On the one hand, manufacturers want to stress the innovative nature of their products and hope to achieve the Holy Grail of their products becoming so dominant that de facto standardisation is achieved. And on the other hand, independent control system programmers, touch screen display designers and systems designers derive incomes from developing individual solutions for each project.

Users vote with their wallets

Users have a different kind of vested interest, realising that their a-v operations can be more efficient and cost-effective if they embrace standardised interfaces and designs.

‘We definitely need standardisation, at the very least in connectivity and display protocols,’ says Stuart Carter, technical consultant to the MoD Defence Crisis Management Centre. ‘A good start would be the institution of internationally recognised parameters that will allow the user to compare like with like when specifying and procuring equipment.’

Increased standardisation would definitely benefit the market,’ agrees UBS a-v manager Peter Rugg. ‘End users find a-v equipment and its terminology difficult to understand.’

At least one major international city name has gone all-out for standardisation (see panel) and other organisations – especially universities and HE colleges – have also standardized their user interfaces. Warwick University, for example, has standardized on the use of push-button Procon Technologies (now AMX) controllers in its main lecture theatres and seminar rooms. City University has deployed TeamMate systems and the same Crestron software in teaching spaces across its campus. And University of Hertfordshire media technology manager Adam Harvey told last month’s meeting of the Lecture Theatre Support Managers’ Group (LTSMG) that they would be wise to hire their own independent programmer to design control systems for their installations, rather than relying on the systems integrators. They could then apply the interfaces across their rooms and avoid having to go back to the integrators and/or manufacturers every time they wanted to install a new piece of kit.

Moving the business forward

Although buyers with large operations and large numbers of room can see the benefits, movement towards standardisation has, so far, been piecemeal. Despite ideas such as the InfoComm dashboard (see panel) that’s not likely to change.

‘Increased standardisation will lead to commoditisation and no manufacturer wants that, as it erodes margins which are partially invested in R&D,’ says Simon Jackson, vp Northern Europe, NEC Display Solutions.

Standardisation, Jackson admits, ‘would make adoption of new technologies easier for the customer’, but he is concerned that ‘at the same time (it) may reduce some of the service element that the channel provides. It’s questionable whether the market would grow as a direct result of standardisation or just make it simpler for all involved, but the simpler it gets the more competitive the market will become, and eventually the customer may decide he can do a lot of the integration himself.’

Midwich director Darren Lewitt is more positive, saying that videoconferencing units ‘could be sold in higher volumes if there was more standardisation, without compromising the specialist seller’ and that other areas ‘like signage and networking, where so many manufacturers do it in different ways’ would also benefit.

But there is an alternative vision, which would see the virtual disappearance of proprietary products.

‘Standardisation is important but it is only part of a process before rationalising to then deliver dynamic digital media through your existing IT,’ says Impact md Julian Phillips.

‘The a-v industry needs to understand that the key issue is not just standardising products but it is rather about finding ways to integrate a-v into customers’ IT networks. ‘There should not be proprietary products any more. The end game is delivering a-v features and benefits over existing IT infrastructure and services.’

So maybe the IT sector, whose standardised products and services are mostly based around proprietary products such as Windows or ‘open source’ technologies, will take over after all.

It’s more likely though, that the a-v sector will first move towards what Jeffreys describes as ‘a systemic approach’ where standards for complete systems, rather than individual pieces of kit, are developed. InfoComm and ANSI, for example, are already working on a standard for the power management of a-v systems. In the meantime, more and more users will realise the benefits of standardising their in-house interfaces and installations – and they’ll insist that the industry provides what they want.

CASE STUDY: THE STANDARDISED BANK

One of the world’s biggest investment banks has standardised all its conferencing and presentation facilities, equipping all it’s a-v rooms with the same control software, the same touch screen interface and a common systems design.

While the bank has declined to be named, it has revealed how it went about the process. It started the process by analysing its current facilities and deciding that it needed four different types of room – an audioconferencing room, a presentation room, a full videoconferencing suite and a smaller videoconferencing room.

‘We have one single Crestron programme which can control four different room types and it is modular, so you can have a Polycom Vortex sound mixer or a ClearOne and you just tell the code which room it is and which hardware configuration you have got. All the wiring is the same and it is the same piece of code so the control system configures itself to run the room,’ says the bank vice president in charge of the project.

‘When we build a new room we don’t write an equipment specification. We give the consultants dealing with the tender specs a list of the manufacturers and models we already have in our code, so the supplier can pick the products to suit the room.’

The idea – which was partly driven by the bank’s decision to move its videoconferencing activities from ISDN to IP – enabled the bank to bring its multipoint video bridging in-house, to do remote monitoring and management of al the rooms around the world, and to be more efficient. Despite doubling the number of rooms in its global conferencing and presentation network – from 150 to over 300 – it has reduced the number of technicians it employs in the USA and stabilised the staff in London who look after Europe and the Far East.

The benefits have not been purely financial. On the one hand, the internal clients find the systems easier to use, it is more reliable and it the user experience is better.

On the other, the process has also improved the standing of a-v within the organisation. ‘We felt it was our duty as a global multimedia team to make sure that whatever the client had, wherever in the world they were they were getting value for money,’ says the bank’s head of multimedia. ‘We have also changed the perception of our team, so they are not just seen as guys who run around the buildings carrying projectors and screens.’

Based on the idea that driving an a-v presentation room should be as intuitive as driving a car, a working group within InfoComm International has gradually developed the concept of a Dashboard for Controls, publishing a design guide and recommendations for touch panel interfaces. A series of templates is in development.