Hello thanks for joining us today, I'm Tasha Danner
as always I'm joined with Josh Rush, he's the VP of Marketing at Audinate and today
our guest is Kurt Bevers. He's a systems engineer at Delta AV systems in Portland, Oregon.
Thanks Kurt for joining us. No problem, thanks for having me.
So could you start by just telling us a little bit about you, your position and Delta AV systems?
Delta AV was formed in 1996 and it's been growing every year pretty much and it's
knock on wood one of the foremost AV design and install firms in the country.
So Kurt what's your background? Do you come from more of the AV side or you
come from the IT side? Well I'm an AV guy and of course these days you
have to be IT savvy. I've been doing this stuff since I was 12 years
old so about a hundred million years ago. But this is about the most exciting kind
of thing that's been going on is we finally have practical answers to the
audio networking questions. I mean not that necessarily
pander to you guys specifically, because you guys have have really got the full
answer to the questions, the predecessors had good operable things but there
was always a gotcha there was a problem there was always a channel limitation or
a latency that was always in the way or some practical implementation challenge
and I really feel like what we, my job no matter how you look at it my job
is to deliver value to the end-user and that's it. If I don't do
anything else, if I've done that I've done my job.
You had mentioned that you come from an AV background,
but these days pretty much have to
do everything so where do you feel like you entered the IT world, or are you still
sort of integrating yourself into the IT world now or do you feel like you're
pretty integrated on both sides? Oh well don't misunderstand me I'm not
an IT guy. And it's best
to partner with the IT guy in any given facility or organization because it
doesn't matter what wild wonderful ideas that we have if they're not for it
you're in fairly deep trouble with Audinate and several other companies
that make really really good applicable product that is
appropriate for answering a lot of these questions.
It's just forced us at gunpoint more or less to become IT savvy. On that note, what do you
think is causing the trend of so much of the AV equipment flowing into the
IT departments? Because of that characteristic that it's just
sitting on the IT guys lap. Right. And they really really really
don't want to deal with it. In principle these guys are asked to manage so much
and just because it travels across their network that's where the rubber hits the
road you know. So that's it I mean, what we try to do is we
try to present them with documentation that is clear, accurate and concise and
and that way their whole pain threshold just drops like a rock you know
know let them know look them straight in the eye and tell them "Look we're not here to
make you life miserable. We're here to enable yo and this will do it
this is why." You know and that that's really it. So when did you start
using Dante what are some of the benefits you see and and what types of
jobs do you tend to recommend networked audio solutions in? If you have a broad
enough scope that is if you widen your eyes far enough, there's really not a
system that it doesn't belong in. I mean a church
is an example. The DSP failed recently when we looked at making this
this change, I suggested the upgrade that look, for what is a fairly
insignificant amount of up charge, we can take you from where you are and I mean
we can replace the function of these DSPs completely and enhance the
capability of this system and it was you know in Catholic Churches
the father is sort of the decision-maker there
understandably so, he thought about it for five seconds and said "do it!"
Obviously! Yeah and interestingly enough we did an upgrade
in that fellowship hall and it is Dante enabled and they have that
capability. So you know what we did was we just opened their eyes far enough.
And in schools, schools are slam dunk
that's another place. I mean you have so many needs in a school you know one of
the big problems that we run into is people don't want to spend their money
twice for some reason, and in schools they really don't want
to do that because they spend their money once every 20 years you know and
churches aren't that far off that. But in principle, people don't want to throw
money away and if I can offer them an expandable solution that adds to
the capability then I am delivering so much value to the end user right
that they both intrinsically see, now they can't put their finger on it today,
but they know partially because I'm a man of my word and partially
because once you mention what it is that you're doing they start to read up on it
and they get very very hip to it very quickly. I was gonna ask about that because you had
mentioned you know sometimes it's hard to motivate people to change just in
general, so have you noticed any challenges in convincing people of the
benefits of upgrading to the system? Or once they understand it is
it pretty simple? Yeah if they're not network savvy, it's a lot harder but
really all it does is it changes how you talk to them. Right. They
don't need to know how the car starts, they just got to know when you
turn the key to hit the gas they're going. And it does its thing and performs. Yeah sure.
Yeah and so operationally it's really pretty easy and interestingly enough
I haven't been turned down once. Not even once.
So just to shift gears a little bit, I know you got a chance to get a preview of Dante Domain Manager
the new network management software we launched a couple months ago. What are your
thoughts about the importance of tools like that when it comes to managing you
know not just a Dante Network but just AV on the IT network in general?
Oh well it's a must. You know and that's really the first thing that I've seen
that makes sense to do it with. Ok. Yeah any time that you get a
reasonably, even you know three or four buildings involved in a in a facility,
you start to have nightmarish management problems. There's actually a fairly
large high-tech advertising firm here locally whose a customer of mine, who
had 46 huddle rooms and they were all different because they were all
built by the guy who is managing that department at the time. And guess
where the problems landed? The IT managers desk. And what DDM offers is
the ability to sit in his IT office and actually know what's going on everywhere
and actually be able to direct it. And that's fairly unique and really key.
Yeah going back to the conversation with the IT manager as you're doing the
selling, do you think tools like that make it easier because it's similar to what
they're seeing on the rest of their IT Network? No question because
you aren't going to have, like the advertising agency you know,
their needs were pretty cut-and-dried. If we were talking about a school, you know
you're going to have umpteenth classrooms and then you're going to have two or
three or four, maybe ten large presentation spaces the AV demands
in each is going to be very very different and the ability to really
drill down and know exactly what's, just even monitoring and knowing
what's going on there, is invaluable. So if you could look into the future
a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, where do you see the
future of AV and IT and the integration of those two going?
Well, the IT is going to be the management hub of this whole thing
there's no question about it, it has to be, because when the rubber hits
the road it's going to be traveling across their network. At this point with
with Audinate and very few others involved the audio is very well taken
care of. The video has got to catch up. That's really, that's the next place
that we really have to get it happening. Now in the last two
months I've looked at end points that are Dante enabled which is the first
that I've seen and that is a wonderful wonderful thing. And I want to
see more of that because again, you know we're just pointing at value basically
the the inclination the customer if he's not spending that money twice, would be
to have that capability as long as the up-charge isn't just insane.
Right. Well none of these endpoints is cheap, so he's spending a
fair amount of money in the first place. But to have a centralized AV scheme and
to really have that capability would really be a wonderful thing.
Well we appreciate you joining us today. Thank you!
Thank you Kurt. It was really nice talking to you.