Every year, InfoComm draws the global AV and technology community to Las Vegas for a look at what’s coming next. This year’s show was the largest in recent memory. More than 28,000 verified attendees from 94 countries filled the Las Vegas Convention Center, and 807 exhibitors covered nearly 400,000 square feet of floor space. The scale was significant. But more important than the numbers was the clarity of the message: AI and cloud-based management are no longer the future of commercial AV. They are the present, and organizations that aren’t planning for them are already behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is what stood out from InfoComm 2026, and what it means for Canadian organizations thinking about their AV and workplace technology investments.<\/p>\n\n\n
The question at InfoComm 2025 was whether AI would deliver meaningful results in commercial AV. At InfoComm 2026, that question was largely settled. AI showed up across every major product category, from ceiling microphones to video walls to room management software. The show’s education program featured more than 46 dedicated AI sessions and a full-day AI Accelerator event that covered everything from fundamentals to enterprise deployment strategy.
The keynotes set the tone. Microsoft’s opening address outlined how AI-powered platforms including Teams Phone, Teams Rooms, and Teams Premium are reshaping how organizations communicate across physical and digital workspaces. Cisco followed with its vision of ‘Connected Intelligence,’ demonstrating how AI can unify AV, IT, and physical infrastructure into a single managed environment. The concept of ‘Distance Zero’ was a recurring theme: the idea that intelligent systems should make remote and in-room participants feel genuinely equal in a meeting, not simply accommodated.
For IT and facilities teams in Canada, this is worth paying attention to. The gap between organizations with well-integrated, AI-enabled AV environments and those running legacy hardware is widening. Productivity, meeting quality, and space utilization data all depend on having infrastructure that can collect and act on real-world inputs.<\/p>\n\n\n
The shift to cloud-based AV management was one of the most consistent themes across the show floor. Multiple manufacturers announced or expanded cloud platforms designed to give IT teams centralized visibility and control over every device in their environment, regardless of physical location. Beyond platforms and software, several new hardware products stood out. Shure launched the IntelliMix Bar Pro, a premium all-in-one collaboration bar designed for larger meeting environments that need enterprise-grade audio without a separate DSP. Neat unveiled a 32-inch all-in-one touchscreen aimed at making room booking and space management simpler for end users. Crestron introduced Collab Compute, a hardware core built to support scalable collaboration deployments across standardized room configurations. InfoComm is a North American and global show, but the themes it surfaces apply directly to how Canadian organizations in the public and private sector should be thinking about their AV environments right now. Cloud-based management is no longer a premium add-on. It is the baseline for any organization that expects to manage more than a handful of meeting rooms without dedicated on-site AV staff. AI-powered tools for audio processing, meeting transcription, room analytics, and space utilization are now widely available from enterprise-grade manufacturers and are certifiable on Microsoft Teams and Zoom platforms. The question is not whether to adopt them, but how to deploy them in a way that integrates with existing IT infrastructure and governance requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Canadian organizations in sectors like government, healthcare, or corporate real estate, this also means revisiting procurement criteria. The best AV systems today are not evaluated by what they do on day one. They are evaluated by how well they can be managed, updated, and scaled over a multi-year lifecycle without requiring significant on-site intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n GAV MGMT was at InfoComm 2026. If you want a direct conversation about what we saw and how it applies to your organization’s AV or physical security environment, reach out to our team. We work with leading manufacturers including Crestron, Shure, Neat, and Samsung, and we can help you build a roadmap that reflects where the industry is actually heading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crestron<\/strong> showcased its XiO Cloud platform, which allows teams to deploy, update, and monitor AV infrastructure across multiple sites from a single dashboard. For organizations managing dozens of meeting rooms across multiple buildings or cities, this kind of centralized control reduces the cost and complexity of on-site support significantly.
Shure<\/strong>, this year’s headline sponsor, brought the same logic to audio. ShureCloud enables IT teams to remotely manage every audio endpoint across a global deployment, with certified support for Microsoft Teams and Zoom environments. Their message at the show was direct: high-quality audio is the foundation that makes everything else work. AI transcription, meeting intelligence, and voice-activated controls all depend on clean input. If the audio fails, the rest of the system fails with it.
Legrand AV<\/strong>‘s Unified Cloud Platform took a vendor-neutral approach, connecting devices from multiple manufacturers including Crestron, Q-SYS, and Microsoft Teams Rooms into a single management layer, with SOC 2 Type 2 certification and integrations with IT ticketing systems like ServiceNow and Jira.
The common thread<\/strong>: organizations are no longer willing to manage AV room by room. They want a single pane of glass across their entire portfolio of spaces, with alerts, automation, and reporting built in.<\/p>\n\n\nNew Hardware Raised the Bar for Meeting Rooms<\/h2>
A recurring theme on the hardware side was simplification. The integration industry has spent years building complex, multi-component systems. Customers are increasingly asking for solutions that are easier to deploy, easier to manage, and easier to update remotely without sending a technician on-site. The products that generated the most attention at InfoComm 2026 were the ones that delivered high performance while reducing the operational burden on IT teams.<\/p>\n\n\nWhat This Means for Canadian Organizations<\/h2>
<\/p>\n\n\n\nTalk to GAV MGMT<\/h2>