AV Technology - March 2008 - (Page 16)

avantage corporate by Joey D’Angelo WHOSE JOB IS IT ANYWAY? As installed AV systems become part of the network, the question of who’s responsible for them arises. O ver the past four or five years, one word has been creeping into every tradeshow discussion, in the halls of every consulting firm, and in the trenches of every AV integration project: convergence. This term encapsulates the rapid merge between AV systems and networking technologies. This phenomenon has resulted in AV being predominantly administered by IT departments instead of the traditional approach of letting facilities handle the responsibility. It is a grand debate among many professionals: Should AV be the IT department’s responsibility, should it be under the control of facilities, or should there be a separate AV depart- and can be accessed remotely. Thus they should be the responsibility of the IT department. Control systems now generally operate on IP networks, and if they are going to reside on the network, they are the responsibility of IT. AV systems display computer images and connect to them, thus they should be the responsibility of IT. AV signals are nowadays sent over standard communications cabling such as Cat-5, and if they run through the IDF closet, then they are the IT department’s responsibility! The IT department already has a rela- SOME ENLIGHTENED ORGANIZATIONS LIKE NASA, SANDIA LABS, CAL BERKELEY, UCSD, THE EISENHOWER LIBRARY, UCSF, SUN, ORACLE, AND OTHERS HAVE REALIZED THE LOGIC OF A SEPARATE AV DEPARTMENT. ment altogether? My experience and my gut instinct tell me that the time has come for an AV department at every company, but don’t take my word for it yet, let’s look at all sides to this argument. If one were to argue in favor of IT being responsible for all things audiovisual, the argument would undoubtedly contain the following: AV systems are being designed to rely on a company’s internal network for communication. Teleconferencing systems, videoconference codecs, VoIP phone systems, and countless other AV assets all require network bandwidth. This bandwidth needs to be budgeted and planned for. Projectors have network ports on them 16 | AVTECHNOLOGY | march 2008 tive comfort level with high-tech gadgetry. This list could be virtually endless. But what about the facilities department? Facilities have historically been responsible for furniture, lighting, building features, photocopiers, coffee machines, and many other fixtures that we use every day. Why not projectors, switchers, or microphones? Facilities personnel have ladders to change light bulbs, so they can also maintain ceiling-mounted projectors. When the company was started ten years ago, the facilities department was in charge of projectors and screens, while the one-person IT department had their hands full maintaining the server and the phone switch. Now that the company is 5,000 employees, facilities doesn’t want to give up AV and its associated budget. Obviously there is a strong argument for either scheme, but lately there is an emerging trend. When I began AV consulting ten years and 210 projects ago, the only people that seemed to sit across the meeting table from me were from facilities. Today, about 90 percent of my clients are IT-specialized. What do they have to say about it? Bob King, IT Service Delivery manager at Barclays Global Investors, states, “If it plugs in and turns on, our users will call IT, not facilities.” Michael D’Angelo, an IT project manager at Nike/Hurley, says, “AV systems are complicated for the end user. When something breaks or doesn’t work as anticipated, nine times out of ten IT is contacted to resolve the issue.” Jason Medal-Katz of Autodesk mentions that, “The facilities group at Autodesk handles AV projects. However, the IT department is part of the project team and helps to coordinate, particularly on projects requiring more technology.” After speaking with several other Fortune 500 companies from the Silicon Valley, I began to see a recurring theme. Computers can be quite fickle, and as they have become a critical component of business, supporting them has become a critical role of the IT department. In the last ten years IT departments have moved from keeping the phone switch and a few servers running to managing hundreds (if not thousands) of desktop PCs, switches, routers, PDAs, phones, or applications. Inevitably, IT has had to evolve with business trends, scale, and perfect the art form of the ever-important “help desk.” In all www.avtechnologyonline.com http://www.avtechnologyonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - March 2008

AV Technology - March 2008 Contents Precedent Corporate: Whose Job Is It Anyway? Education: There’s No Business Like Show Business Government: Technology and the New World Order Buying a Videoconference System They Will Actually Use AV After Hours The Sound of HD Conferencing Assembling the Design Team Concert Hall Acoustics on a High School Budget Audio Architecture Keeping a Watchful Eye Product Spotlight Tech Horizons Product Review New Products AV MO

AV Technology - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.