ISE 2026 – Bigger, Clearer, and (Finally) Less AI Theater
TalkingPointz (Dave & I) are just back from ISE, and I wanted to share some initial impressions as we work on more detailed coverage.
Integrated Systems Europe continues to grow, and ISE 2026 appears to have taken another meaningful step up in scale. Attendance felt materially higher than prior years, reinforcing the sense that this has become the most important global gathering for professional AV and collaboration technology. The Fira Barcelona venue continues to handle the show itself extremely well, but the city remains a challenging host for an event of this size. Getting to and from the venue is cumbersome, taxis are scarce at peak times, and rush hour travel can become nearly unworkable. The show succeeds despite the city logistics, not because of them.
That said, the energy on the show floor was unmistakable. This felt like a confident, mature industry event rather than one chasing headlines. An impressive collection of industry analysts and media now attend the conference.
ISE has emerged as the conference for room video systems. It is a huge event with many technologies, and meeting rooms are only a small portion, but it has become the event for meeting room hardware. More so than InfoComm, more so than Enterprise Connect. We didn’t see all of the platform providers (no 8×8/JITSCI, RingCentral, or Zoom), but every vendor of cameras, bars, codecs, and microphones, and many of the larger A/V specialists were there. Nor is it a general UC/UCaaS event. There were a few phones and many headsets, but mostly from vendors that also offered room systems.
A Welcome Pullback From AI-Washing
One of the most noticeable shifts at ISE this year was what wasn’t front and center. After multiple tech conferences dominated by aggressive AI branding and loosely defined “AI-powered” claims, enterprise vendors largely returned to talking about core capabilities, real features, and practical deployment realities. That restraint was refreshing and overdue, and it aligns with what we’ve been hearing from enterprise buyers who are increasingly skeptical of AI as a catch-all value proposition.
An interesting exception came from Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn, who introduced (to us anyway) the term “Ambient AI” – not as a feature to be invoked, but as something always present and operating quietly in the background. The framing was subtle and effective: AI that automatically adjusts a camera, translates speech, anticipates intent, invokes an agent, or smooths workflows without user interaction. If that vision plays out, it has implications well beyond collaboration software, including a future where complex control systems simply fade into the background because there is nothing left for users to actively control…not to mention a future rife with privacy concerns.
Microsoft’s DEP Dominance
From a collaboration systems perspective, Microsoft was clearly the gravitational center of the show. The Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP) is now widely adopted, appearing across a broad range of manufacturers, including several new entrants introduced at ISE.
It’s remarkable how far and how quickly MDEP has impacted the MTR. We heard about MDEP for years, but it wasn’t until last year (ISE25) that the first MDEP product was unveiled. A year later, it was everywhere. Logitech is the only major MTR vendor that didn’t have an MDEP story this year (but has already announced they’re ready to jump in if needed in the future). MDEP is a force to be reckoned with. On the positive side, it will make the user experience more consistent and secure across vendors. But that comes with fewer opportunities for the partners to differentiate.
A recurring theme we heard was “Teams and Zoom compatible.” Secondary, but prevalent, were solutions that work with Google Meet and Cisco Webex, as well as an announcement that Meet was now part of the Teams Direct Guest Join process.
Cisco’s Continued Progress
Cisco arrived at ISE with more than incremental product updates – it arrived with a clearer strategic signal. Yes, there was a new high-end room codec and a refreshed Desk Pro G2, but the more interesting move was philosophical. The dual-camera design on the Desk Pro G2 is not just about better framing for close-up versus distance shots. It is a hint that spatial or 3D capture will become a native capability of collaboration rather than a high-ceremony experience. Cisco appears to be betting that 3D will become an attribute of the video stream – present when the far-end display can take advantage of it, invisible when it cannot – without breaking workflows, requiring special rooms, or imposing premium licensing models.
That approach stands in sharp contrast to the recent trajectory of Google and HP’s ultra-high-end, one-to-one telepresence strategy, which has tied spatial video to expensive, dedicated booths aimed at a tiny slice of the market. Cisco, by comparison, seems focused on scale. It is quietly wiring 3D readiness into mainstream endpoints that already live in millions of offices, aligning with how enterprises actually buy and deploy rooms. When spatial displays eventually become commonplace, Cisco’s capture infrastructure may already be in place – no trophy rooms, no science projects, just “futureproof” endpoints doing what they already do well.
For long-time observers of Cisco video, the bigger story is philosophical. Cisco is now building some of the most capable collaboration hardware in the market while embracing native or near-native compatibility with multiple platforms. That represents a complete reversal from Cisco’s historically closed, platform-first strategy and reflects a far more pragmatic understanding of how enterprise customers actually buy and deploy rooms today.
Other Notable Hits and Misses
The show boasted steady innovation from companies such as AudioCodes, Appspace, Barco, Crestron, Neat, Jabra, Netspeek, Nureva, and others, which we’ll be covering in detail on our social channels and in the February Insider report. In addition to those advancements, there were some notable developments.
Shure – the century-old audio mainstay – drew attention with its first video bar, the IntelliMix Bar Pro, which features cameras at the ends of the bar to improve angles and coverage in larger rooms. While their stand was busy all week, and the ads for the device were unavoidable, the question is whether this first-generation video product from an audio-first brand can turn early buzz into proven, long-term performance, or if it will be just another well-intentioned near miss by a legacy audio firm.
And speaking of well-intentioned, Owl Labs’ introduced a new Meeting Owl 5 Pro COT device, which adds more enterprise-friendly features, yet is still presented by the company like a B to C consumer gadget. Until Owl genuinely pivots its strategy away from consumer-directed Google search word engagement and toward enterprise IT buyers, it is unlikely to be perceived any differently.
Less Swag, Better Signals
ISE was all business. Thankfully, no insulting booth babes, not much SWAG, not even much candy (lots of coffee though). With sustainability concerns becoming harder to ignore, fewer branded trinkets is a positive shift. Actually, the show badge was a lesson in sustainability – print at home. They handed out cardboard holders – no plastics or metals, and it even had a clever strap that kept it facing forward.
ISE can also be described as solid. The booths/stands are very large and very solid. Most conferences charge exhibitors by weight for their booth. As a result, most booths/stands are lightweight and barely make it through the event. ISE doesn’t charge for weight, so the booths were fortresses. No leap of faith required for one to climb to an upper floor or gain respite from all the walking by leaning on a wall. We have lived in homes built with fewer materials than some of these stands.
A Subtle but Important Camera Trend
One additional emerging pattern worth flagging – and one that deserves deeper treatment – is the growing number of room cameras combining mechanical pan-tilt-zoom with digital ePTZ elements in a single system. We have seen this in devices as old as Polycom’s Eagle Eye Producer, and a few others over the years, more recently in camera models from AudioCodes, and this year from Logitech and Crestron. It appears to be a pragmatic “best of both worlds” solution for covering long, complex rooms, and it may be quietly becoming the new default rather than a niche design choice. Look for a future article on that subject.
Keep An Eye On Our Social Channels This Week
Our team spent a great deal of time with the exhibitors we designated as “Pick Hitz” of ISE 2026. We’ll be sharing these showcase video segments over the next few weeks to ensure you don’t miss the key messages from ISE. You’ll be able to see them all at this YouTube playlist (once we finish editing and posting them there, of course).
Up Next
With ISE in the rear view mirror, Dave heads to Amsterdam for Cisco Live. The device news broke at ISE, but we expect much more from Team Webex at CLive. Dave is also attending the RingCentral Analyst update.
Both Dave and I are getting ready for the new Enterprise Connect event in Las Vegas in March. Dave will moderate these two sessions, and I will present these two. We’re both excited to experience the new EC. After that, the calendar continues with the National Association of Broadcasters conference, Mobile World Congress, the Microsoft 365 Conference, and much more.
What’s the best way to stay on top of the important news and analyses from these events? Well, subscribe to the TalkingPointz Insider Report, of course. This free Insider Lite contains just a tiny fraction of the insightful, curated reports our paid subscribers receive.
This was originally published via our Substack.