The term “audio-visual” isn’t bandied around much these days, relegated instead to the old-school slide projectors and film spools that used to dominate public education. But InFocus is hoping the term will spur a new opportunity for the channel as the next generation of audio-visual components — DLP and digital projectors, slim displays and the underlying wireless networks that facilitate collaboration from any location – come into view.

InFocus President and CEO Robert O’Malley believes the convergence of communications and IT networks has spurred another technology convergence – of IT and the audio-visual space. O'Malley shares those perspectives, and more, in this FastChat Video:

“We’ve been talking about convergence of technology for some time, and the technologies have converged – everything is digital, everything is on an IP transport,” he said. “What hasn’t converged are the applications and the channels. We’re now seeing that start to happen more – we’re starting to see channel partners pick up IP infrastructure and add to that AV applications.”

The company is on target to unveil a new hardware offering in June 2011 that InFocus believes will resonate well with its channel partners, especially those looking to dive deeper into the collaboration pool.

“What we’re seeing now is more and more channel partners starting to take up AV applications as an area of expertise because these applications are fitting in right squarely into their customers’ businesses,” he said.

MSPs in particular are well-positioned to add value through InFocus’ technology without doing a lot of heavy lifting, since most already have an IP network in place. “They can now start to add to that infrastructure, which is going to increase their revenue with their current customers,” O’Malley said.

“We also think adding applications like AV applications and security applications are going to allow [the channel] to go out and acquire new customers, which is another source of revenue for the managed service providers.”

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