Every few years, the AV industry declares that this is the moment everything moves to the cloud. And every time, reality is far more complicated.
What’s happening now follows that familiar pattern. When people speak of the “state of cloud production,” there’s often an assumption that AV infrastructure is racing toward public cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud at the same pace that IT departments adopted cloud solutions for data storage and software hosting. But from where I sit, working with enterprise clients every day, that’s not what’s happening.
What we’re really seeing is a very big movement toward cloud management infrastructure, but not a big movement of AV infrastructure itself to the cloud. And the reasons why have everything to do with budgets, existing investments, and probably the biggest driver right now, the broader economy.
For quite a while, the idea of shifting from CapEx to OpEx was a major motivator for companies moving toward cloud workflows. But with today’s interest rates and economic pressures, the financial advantages of public cloud have softened. Without that pressure, organizations are less inclined to abandon hardware they’ve already paid for, especially when that hardware still does the job.
Meanwhile, our vendors, who’ve poured time and money into cloud-based versions of their products, find themselves pushing against a market that’s hit the pause button. The result is that private cloud has become the dominant force.
What 'Private Cloud' Means in AV
There’s a lot of confusion around this term, so let’s define it. Private cloud doesn’t mean spinning up a bunch of AWS or Azure compute instances on premise. It means running cloud-designed, software-defined tools on servers that the customer owns.
A private cloud can be as simple as one big, fast server in your server room. Or it can be a full rack running a hypervisor with all the bells and whistles. Either way, the cloud piece is in the software architecture, not the location.
Vendors like this model because moving from hardware to software dramatically shortens R&D cycles. When you’re building physical hardware, especially with custom chips or FPGAs, you’re talking about long development, prototype, and test cycles. In software, you can iterate that in days or weeks. So, the shift is less about “moving to the cloud” and more about moving to software-defined AV, which just happens to be cloud-compatible.
The movement toward software-defined AV, rather than public cloud, is the real story right now.
Every now and then, someone asks whether the “second or third-tier” cloud providers change the equation. And yes, many of them are less expensive simply because they charge less. But the economic model is the same: You pay based on how much you use. The classic disaster scenario remains—someone forgets to shut down the infrastructure before the end of the day, and the organization receives a surprise bill.
You also have models like co-location facilities, where companies, such as Level 3, rent out data center space. In that case, you get their power, cooling, and security, but you bring your own hardware. That brings the model back to CapEx, but still gives you the resilience and scale of a professional data center.
All these variations prove one thing: Very little in this space is black-and-white.
Where Are We Going?
Public cloud adoption for AV remains relatively small. Software-defined AV continues to grow. And more of that software is running on customer-owned hardware, not cloud infrastructure.
It’s an interesting shift and it creates its own challenges. For example, moving to private cloud means an organization must deal with its own security team, server maintenance, replacement cycles, and so on.
But because all this hardware is COTS, AV teams can lean on existing IT skill sets. Maintaining a server today isn’t exotic. It’s everyday IT work.
The upside for vendors is that, if they build correctly using containerized technologies like Kubernetes and Docker, the same software can run in a room, in a company’s data center, at a colocation center (colo), or in the public cloud. That flexibility is absolutely new to the AV world.
This capability means that I can take, for example, a software-based video switcher and run the exact same tool in four different places without changing anything except the license assignment. That allows companies to choose deployment models based on what matters most to them today.
If a CFO wants the most predictable cost model possible, the company can run it on owned hardware. If the priority is maximum uptime, they can run in a highly redundant colo. If they want operators anywhere in the world to produce events in any room in the world, cloud instances become attractive.
The key point is this: The AV operator uses the same tool no matter what business decision their company makes. That has never been the case before.
This flexibility isn’t tied to a specific type of corporate AV, either. It applies to everyone, from production studios to everyday meeting room operations. The software runs wherever it makes the most sense at that moment.
Complicated Financial Planning
For years, the industry talked about cloud as a financial strategy: Move CapEx to OpEx. But true financial planning is more complicated. Companies care about total cost of operation, efficiency, and competitive edge.
Our clients aren’t trying to become AV companies. They want to communicate, collaborate, and run their businesses as effectively as possible. We need to think at that level. If I’m working with an automotive company, their goal is not to become the best videoconferencing organization. They want to build great cars; they expect us to deliver solutions that make them better at their business.
Cloud, whether it’s public or private, doesn’t automatically do that. Software-defined workflows might. Flexibility might. Better uptime might. Lower total cost of operation might. But the answer is different for every organization. That’s why the movement toward software-defined AV, rather than public cloud, is the real story right now.
Many people mistakenly equate “software-defined” with “public cloud.” Those are very different ideas. Software-defined AV can run anywhere, including on prem. As our industry gets more comfortable with containerization and virtualization, customers will gain even more freedom to shape workflows around their business priorities, not the limitations of hardware.
At the end of the day, our industry is shifting from asking, “Should we move to cloud?” to asking, “Where should this run to make our organization most effective?” That’s a much more mature conversation. And it signals a future where AV technology isn’t just keeping up, it’s finally aligning with the way enterprises actually operate.
