CORPORATE AND CONFERENCING 41 F or years, corporate AV was a quietly functional discipline. Screens worked (most of the time), microphones were checked, presentations were delivered and the technology largely stayed out of the way. But something has changed. As organisations speak to larger, more distributed audiences, the expectations placed on internal and external communications have risen sharply. Today’s town halls, investor briefings, leadership updates and hybrid events are closer to television programmes than PowerPoint meetings. It’s in this context that LIVE was invited on a site visit to a major corporate headquarters in London. What we saw inside its newly transformed auditorium was unmistakable: a fully-fledged, broadcast-quality production environment built around tools more commonly found in television studios than office buildings. At the centre of this shift is Ross Video, whose broadcast AV philosophy is increasingly finding a home in corporate spaces. To understand why, and what it looks like in practice, LIVE spoke with Bryan Davies, regional sales manager for corporate, EMEA at Ross Video, whose team was deeply involved in this project and several others. AV IN THE AUDITORIUM The London auditorium we visited was once a familiar sight in many large organisations: a well-intentioned but underused space, limited by ageing technology and rigid workflows. According to Davies, the ambition was not simply to upgrade the kit, but to reimagine what the space could be. “The project transformed an aging, underutilised auditorium into a broadcast-quality live production environment. Rather than deploying traditional point-to-point AV, the design adopted a software-defined, broadcast- centric architecture using Ross Video production technologies.” This move away from conventional enterprise AV toward a broadcast model is significant. Instead of isolated devices connected in fixed ways, the system was designed as an integrated production environment. “The heart of the solution involves a Ross production control and routing solution framework, thereby making it a closed environment for a live event studio. This solution incorporates Ross’s vision for open, scalable and open- interoperable technology platforms for ease of scalability.” One of the most striking aspects of the visit was how calm and confident the AV team appeared. Despite the sophistication under the hood, the system felt approachable, familiar even, to operators that are used to corporate environments. “A critical design goal was delivering broadcast-grade output while maintaining simplicity for day-to-day operators.” Achieving that meant choosing tools that brought professional power
Rather than traditional point-to-point AV, the design adopted a software- defined, broadcast- centric architecture
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