Executive Summary
- AIMS has driven open IP standards in broadcast and expanded into Pro AV with the development of IPMX.
- IPMX reached key milestones in 2026, establishing an independent product certification process for multi-vendor interoperability.
- Open standards protect long-term investments, enable vendor choice, and set the foundation for software and AI-driven innovations.
The Milestone Year of IPMX Certification
2026 was a landmark year for IPMX and for the organization behind it, AIMS. IPMX became a fully developed, certifiable standard, with 48 products certified at the first formal testing event and another 14 added at the second. For consultants, integrators, and end users, independent certification provides something far more valuable than a compatibility claim: documented evidence that products meet published requirements and can operate within a multivendor ecosystem.
That represents an important step for a Pro AV market long defined by competing proprietary approaches to AV over IP. Many of those platforms have delivered valuable capabilities, but they can also require customers to commit to one supplier’s technology and product ecosystem. Until recently, there was little prospect of a broadly supported, open alternative.
AIMS had seen this problem before. More than a decade ago, the broadcast industry faced a similarly fragmented transition to IP. Competing approaches created uncertainty about interoperability, vendor lock-in, and the long-term value of major infrastructure investments. AIMS helped bring that market together around an open-standards roadmap.
Lessons Learned from Broadcast Industry Transition
A little history helps explain how. By 2015, broadcasters and other media organizations had largely come to accept that IP would become the foundation of future media operations. IP was not merely another way to transport signals. It was the on-ramp to virtualization, cloud computing and software-based processing. For software to operate on video, audio and other media essences, those essences needed to become data carried in packets.
The destination was becoming clear, but the route was not. Suppliers were advancing different approaches, including proprietary technologies that did not necessarily interoperate. Broadcasters faced the risk of investing in a platform that could lock them into one vendor or leave them stranded on the wrong technology path.
Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo, Nevion, and Snell Advanced Media came together in December 2015, forming AIMS – the Alliance for IP Media Solutions – to chart a common, open path forward. Mike Cronk of Grass Valley served as the first board chair, and I served as vice chair. Our purpose was not to create another standards-development organization. It was to bring suppliers and users together around one practical roadmap, promote the adoption of open standards and help the market understand why interoperability mattered.
The original roadmap connected existing and emerging standards for IP video, audio and media transport. As that work matured, SMPTE ST 2110 established a common approach for carrying separate, synchronized video, audio and ancillary-data streams across managed IP networks. The principle behind the roadmap was straightforward: suppliers should compete through the products, capabilities and value they build above a common foundation—not by creating incompatible foundations of their own.
The industry responded quickly. AIMS passed 50 members within eight months, and large multivendor demonstrations showed that open IP interoperability was more than a paper exercise. As products came to market and deployments increased, the discussion progressed from moving packets to making complete systems easier to discover, connect, manage and operate.
Then, in 2018, members active in both broadcast and Pro AV began seeing the same pattern emerging in the Pro AV market. AV was moving onto the network, but users often had to choose among closed ecosystems that offered limited interoperability beyond a particular supplier’s portfolio. Those members brought the concern to the AIMS leadership: Pro AV was approaching the same crossroads broadcast had faced only a few years earlier.
Adapting Open Standards for Pro AV Needs
AIMS formed its Pro AV Working Group in late 2018 under the leadership of David Chiappini of Matrox. Its objective was to promote an open-standards approach to AV over IP, drawing on the broadcast industry’s experience while tailoring that approach to the specific needs of Pro AV.
That distinction was important. The group determined that Pro AV could build on appropriate elements of ST 2110 and related open specifications, but it had its own technical, operational, and economic requirements. Pro AV needed support for compressed as well as uncompressed media, common 1Gb networks, asynchronous sources, simplified timing, HDMI, HDCP, and installation practices suitable for a much broader community of integrators and users.
The result was IPMX. It is not a proprietary platform or a replacement for ST 2110. Rather, it adapts that proven open foundation to the real-world requirements of Pro AV, providing a common approach to transporting and controlling video, audio, and associated data across multi-vendor systems.
Progress came in stages. Early demonstrations established technical viability. The IPMX identity gave the initiative a clear market presence, and a major live multivendor interoperability demonstration at InfoComm 2022 showed products and development platforms working together. Testing, plugfests, and specification work continued until IPMX was ready to move from development into formal certification.
That brings us back to 2026. Certification means the market no longer has to rely solely on a manufacturer’s assertion that a product is compatible with IPMX. Products are independently tested against published requirements, and the results are documented. That gives consultants greater confidence when writing specifications, integrators more choice when assembling systems and end users greater protection for long-term investments.
Certification alone will not drive adoption, however. Education is equally important. AIMS supports the market through the IP Showcase, extensive online educational materials and the new IPMX training program. Open standards create opportunity, but their benefits are realized only when people understand how to specify, design and operate the systems built on them.
[IPMX, Certified. What Does This Mean? We Explain, in Detail.]
A Software and AI-Driven Future
The transition to IP is still underway. Proprietary platforms will not disappear overnight, nor will every connection need to become IP. But the core of media operations is steadily becoming software driven and network based because that is what enables flexible processing, distributed workflows, virtualization, and cloud integration.
It also creates the conditions for the next wave of innovation. Once video, audio, and other essences are available as packetized data, software—including AI—can analyze and act on them. That opens opportunities to improve monitoring, automate repetitive tasks, optimize operations, and help people make better decisions.
A decade on, AIMS continues to champion open standards, demonstrate interoperability, and give the market the education and resources needed to move forward confidently. Broadcast’s experience showed that open standards can transform an industry when competitors agree to cooperate at the foundation. IPMX gives Pro AV the opportunity to do the same.
