The Potential Rebirth of InfoComm
(As originally posted on LinkedIn here)
After many years of trying, it took a herculean effort by InfoComm show organizers to get Microsoft to exhibit at that show at all. If we set the Wayback machine to June 2014, when Microsoft finally did show up, it looked less like a debut and more like a placeholder. The company paid for a large patch of floor space and then seemed almost afraid to use it. A couple of displays. White work tables. Lots of open space. Very little sense that Microsoft wanted to make a statement there.
At the time, the message felt fairly clear. Microsoft still saw itself primarily as an IT company, not an AV company. If it wanted to reach the collaboration market, it would do so mainly on IT turf, and that turf was the Enterprise Connect event. That was where the telecom, UC, and IT communities gathered, and that was where Microsoft appeared far more comfortable planting its flag.
Fast forward to 2026 and the reversal is hard to miss. Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn is keynoting InfoComm. Cisco’s Espen Løberg is keynoting as well. For those of us who remember when neither company looked especially eager to embrace the AV trade show world, that is a remarkable shift.
But this is where a little nuance matters.
Microsoft’s recent comments suggest it sees less value in Enterprise Connect than it once did. That may be Microsoft’s view and that of a few other firms, but it is not necessarily the view of the broader CX, contact center, and enterprise communications community. There are still plenty of people who believe Enterprise Connect remains worthwhile precisely because of the conversations, the networking, the face time, and yes, even the simple value of communications professionals and analysts getting together for the sake of getting together. As I discussed in a recent blog, trade shows are not just lead machines. They are industry gatherings, and that still matters.
What has changed is not that Enterprise Connect suddenly became irrelevant, but that InfoComm has become a much more important place for these conversations than it once was. The old wall between AV and IT has been coming down for years. Room systems are now software platforms, even when they are appliances. Device fleets are managed like IT endpoints. Security, analytics, AI, networking, cloud services, and workplace strategy are all part of the same discussion. AV did not stop being AV, but it became far more technical, more integrated, and more central to enterprise decision-making than comparing pixel quality on projector shoot-outs ever was.
In that sense, Microsoft’s presence at InfoComm is not just a speaking slot. It is an acknowledgment of where the market has gone.
Also hanging over all of this is the broader shape of the AV industry itself. While the technology side of the business was slowly becoming more software-driven, more network-driven, and more IT-like, the business side has been consolidating. Bigger integrators have been buying smaller integrators for pennies on the dollar, rolling up regional relationships, absorbing local expertise, and concentrating more power in fewer hands. That has changed the character of the market too. The AV industry may talk endlessly about growth, but much of what it has really experienced is consolidation, with larger firms expanding geography and market control by swallowing smaller ones. That is part of the same story. As the stakes got bigger, the technologies got more strategic, and the customers got more enterprise-focused, the old distinction between “the AV people” and “the IT people” became harder to maintain.
As it relates to the InfoComm show, Cisco followed an arc similar to Microsoft. In the early days of immersive TelePresence, Cisco was hardly a natural InfoComm company either. Over time, especially after its purchase of Tandberg, that changed. Now both Microsoft and Cisco are on the keynote stage. That is not a minor programming detail. It is a sign that the center of gravity has shifted. And for InfoComm, it is a bigger deal than it would have been in the past, when the InfoComm keynote slot often went to a B-list celebrity outsider rather than to executives helping define the future of the industry itself.
And yet, this recognition has come slower than it should have.
InfoComm itself became AVIXA, and AVIXA has done a particularly poor job advocating for the industry and explaining its strategic importance in terms the broader construction, business and technology worlds could understand. If anything, the rise of InfoComm as a destination for major collaboration, workplace, and platform conversations feels delayed, not accelerated. This is not some overnight success story. It is a market reality that took longer than it should have to be fully recognized.
In 2015, I gave the keynote address at InfoComm Connections Silicon Valley, a regional event that was around for only a couple of years. My main point then was that AV needed to pivot more toward IT, with standards, repeatable processes, an ITIL-style framework, and a much more disciplined operational mindset. At the time, not many people wanted to hear it. Instead, InfoComm itself rebranded toward “AV experiences,” complete with a kind of ‘wow-we’re-special’ messaging that incorrectly suggested the industry’s biggest challenge was not credibility or integration, but self-esteem. Instead of embracing IT teams, the messaging was “we’re better than they are” when it should have simply been we all have different, equally valuable skills and specialties.
It has taken more than another decade to get to the point where InfoComm is finally being viewed by companies like Cisco and Microsoft as the place where key collaboration and communications professionals can be reached ahead of other venues and shows.
Back in 2014, Microsoft’s nearly empty booth seemed to say, “We’re here because we have to be.” In 2026, a Microsoft keynote says something very different. It says the old distinction between the IT show and the AV show no longer holds the way it once did. The buyers, the influencers, the partners, and the strategic conversations are showing up in different places now.
The tide did not turn all at once. It turned slowly, unevenly, and with more resistance than it should have.
But it has turned.
And one cannot help wondering whether it might have turned a lot sooner if AVIXA leadership had embraced the IT reality of this market earlier, instead of trying to convince itself that “wow – look at how special we are” was a strategy.
Now, with an imminent change of leadership on the horizon at AVIXA, there is an opportunity to correct what was arguably the wrong turn. Maybe we can rebrand once again to InfoComm, understood here as a blend of Information Technology and Communications, which enthusiastic participants seem to be recognizing more quickly than our consolidating industry has.
Wow indeed.