2016 north american managed video conferencing services company...

2016 North AmericanManaged Video Conferencing Services

Company of the Year Award

2016

NORTH AMERICAN MANAGED VIDEO CONFERENCING SERVICES COMPANY OF THE YEAR AWARD

2016

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2016 1 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 2

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 2

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 6

Significance of Company of the Year ............................................................................. 7

Understanding Company of the Year ............................................................................. 7

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 8

Best Practice Award Analysis ....................................................................................... 8

Decision Support Scorecard ................................................................................... 8

Visionary Innovation & Performance ....................................................................... 9

Customer Impact ................................................................................................. 9

Decision Support Matrix ...................................................................................... 10

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ..................... 11

Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 11

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 12



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

User demand for video communications is growing exponentially. Frost & Sullivan monitors how the proliferation of mobile devices - combined with an unending appetite to consume video content - has been a big driver for boosting adoption of video communications including video conferencing. Video conferencing is becoming a key enabling technology for accelerating digital transformation in sectors such as manufacturing, banking, health care, education, energy, retail, and hospitality. Video-enabled customer engagement, digital classroom, mobile and virtual banking, smart factories, digital talent acquisition, and ehealthcare are just a few areas where video conferencing is fundamentally changing how business is being done.

Though video conferencing has been around for decades, in the past its usage has been rife with high costs and complexity. As a result, adoption has often remained limited. Yet Frost & Sullivan points out that user expectations have greatly shifted. Users want video conferencing to be as simple as a click away and deliver experiences that are truly engaging. Businesses understand the value of deploying video conferencing widely across their organization. At the same time, they are overwhelmed with the technology implementation and the strain it can put on IT resources.

Organizations report to Frost & Sullivan that they are looking for services and solutions that enable them to

• implement reliable and simple to use video conferencing with guaranteed service levels

• support capacity growth as their needs grow - at affordable costs

• support migration to cloud that works with existing investments and allows them to keep their current infrastructure while integrating new applications

• ensure their IT Staff has the right skills to support current video conferencing infrastructure

• offer seamless interoperability between large conference rooms, huddle rooms, mobile devices, desktop systems, and other varied meeting spaces

As more and more businesses make video conferencing a core part of their communications and deploy it organization wide, these requirements are creating a groundswell of demand for managed services. A new breed of service providers are disrupting the market with next generation cloud and managed services that are transforming how communications and collaboration capabilities are purchased and consumed delivering dramatic changes in cost savings, risk reduction, business agility,



ease of use, and management. Frost & Sullivan recognizes the fact that AVI-SPL is a leading provider in offering a new class of video conferencing solutions which are not only affordable to deploy in every meeting space, but also make the experience both simple and reliable.

Addressing a Wide Range of Customer Needs

The video conferencing market is changing dynamically. An influx of providers is now offering next generation solutions to capitalize on the growth opportunity. As such, Frost & Sullivan points out that enterprises have more options than ever before when choosing technology and implementation models. However, many providers are offering cookie cutter services that are not aligned with the complex communication needs of today’s enterprises.

AVI-SPL’s approach to technology implementation hinges on a strategy that is comprehensive, yet flexible enough and targeted at organizations that are looking for a measured and practical approach to video conferencing. AVI-SPL works closely with enterprises to understand and optimize their business operations and requirements. It has an established portfolio of managed services that is very much aligned with the predominant needs of enterprise users. Moreover, its cloud services span across public, private and hybrid collaboration solutions which gives organizations the flexibility to maintain existing investments while planning for next gen services.

AVI-SPL stands out in the enterprise collaboration market with a portfolio that is both broad and deep, addressing everything from small team collaboration to large scale events.

In the managed video conferencing services market, AVI-SPL offers:

• Comprehensive remote managed services which offer around-the-clock monitoring of AV and video collaboration systems.

• Private hosting of infrastructure that is deployed in AVI-SPL’s data centers with hardware, storage and network dedicated to a single company.

• On-premise deployment and management of customer’s infrastructure, with the AVI-SPL team providing on-site systems management.

• End to end management of video conferencing, including call scheduling and launching, and an on-demand help desk that’s available during video calls.

AVI-SPL’s Symphony Platform is its cornerstone technology that offers a range of value-add features and services including monitoring and management; scheduling; actionable analytics on usage; signal quality and meeting experience including a new QoE (Quality of Experience) measure; a rich admin dashboard for a global view of conferencing estate and



its performance; and integration via APIs with other monitoring and scheduling applications like Crestron Fusion. Symphony adapts to customers’ workflows so there is no need for an overhaul of existing processes. Symphony’s Business Process Automation Module allows AVI-SPL to customize how client meetings are organized, monitored and managed down to the device level. In addition, for customers that are ready for cloud migration, AVI-SPL offers multi-tenant OPEX based Unify ME VMR, a Virtual Meeting Room (VMR) service.

While other service providers in the market are pushing their customers to adopt public clouds, AVI-SPL works closely with enterprises to understand and optimize their business operations and requirements to see when and how the organizations can realistically migrate to the cloud. Frost & Sullivan recognizes how AVI-SPL clearly remains in lock-step with changing customer needs.

Strong Financial Performance

With over 40 years of audio/video conferencing service expertise, AVI-SPL supports over 5,000 conferences monthly. AVI-SPL has a dominant presence in the AV systems integration market, which it has successfully leveraged to extend the depth and scale of its offerings.

The company’s recent financial highlights include:

• In 2015, AVI-SPL saw a 20 percent bookings growth, which is almost double that of the average growth of the industry. The company is looking to continue the momentum into 2016 with a heavy focus on providing reliable service, developing and acquiring talent, and evolving into the collaboration provider space.

• More than 50 percent of AVI-SPL’s systems bookings are now video conferencing related. It is estimated that its 2016 video conferencing sales run rate is roughly $290M, and represents a 20 percent growth rate over the prior year.

• In 2015, a third of AVI-SPL’s video conferencing managed services sales were from its cloud-based services, including remote monitoring and management, hosted bridging services, and Collaboration as a Service. In the first six months of 2016, its cloud-based services have grown by 112 percent YoY.

In 2016, AVI-SPL has reached a fast growing installed base of hundreds of enterprise customers that are using its cloud and managed video conferencing services. Frost & Sullivan applauds how AVI-SPL is aggressively pursuing all opportunities in the conferencing market. It continues to invest in not only next gen platforms and services, but also in building a world class workforce that forms the foundation for its managed services business.



Global Footprint

While many of its nearest competitors have a regional focus, AVI-SPL serves its customers across the globe with a strong footprint in key geographies outside North America. Within the U.S. market, AVI-SPL has a strong presence from coast to coast. With a strong global reach through its operations from 37 offices and 3 VNOCs across North America, Europe and the Middle East, AVI-SPL has completed more than 32,000 installations in 101 countries.

The company has been expanding its presence in the EMEA market since 2013, when it first stepped into Europe. AVI-SPL now has a broad physical presence across Europe and announced opening operations in Germany this month. In 2015, its UK office doubled in size. In addition, it has formed key partnerships in Australia along with forming a significant relationship with Vega in Asia. With presence of three global help desks, AVI-SPL’s footprint enables it to effectively service national and multi-national organizations with standardized solutions across regions with consistent SLAs.

Consistent Customer Experiences across Varied Meeting Spaces

Business videoconferencing is fast-becoming the go-to communications tool. As more and more businesses look to implement wall-to-wall video conferencing, they are rolling out video conferencing devices in diverse environments that include board rooms, conference rooms, huddle rooms, open work spaces, and over desktop and mobile devices. However, as users move from one meeting environment to another, they face the daunting challenge of acclimatizing with varied devices and user interfaces and consequently inconsistent user experiences. This also compounds the management challenges for IT.

A key requirement to minimize user inertia is to create a consistent and standardized experience. AVI-SPL simplifies this complex process. It focuses on providing the resources so that clients do not end up with a mish-mash of workflows. AVI-SPL implements an end-to-end video conferencing implementation with the right management and support that provides not only a consistent front-end experience for users, but also an integrated service and support at the backend for IT admins.

Strong Microsoft Capabilities

AVI-SPL has a well-established ecosystem of key partners ranging from AV heavyweights, monitor/display manufacturers, control system designers, to video technology providers. In recent months, a big game changer for AVI-SPL has been its strong and fast growing set of Microsoft capabilities. AVI-SPL updated its Microsoft practice to Gold Certification in Q3 2015 which is a major feat. It offers robust professional services expertise with its Microsoft practice – it can manage Skype for Business deployments from migration plans to license sales to implementation services.



In addition, AVI-SPL is a global delivery partner for Microsoft Surface Hub with partner agreements in U.S., Canada, Europe and Middle East. The Microsoft Surface Hub incorporates interactive touch screen technology with its own speakers, microphone arrays, and software apps to help create advanced meeting room collaboration experiences. More importantly, Surface Hub allows users to connect to each other through Skype for Business, and share their work during meetings in real time. AVI-SPL provides services surrounding Microsoft Surface Hub beyond transactional product sales as part of its growing Microsoft practice. Utilizing its global services infrastructure, AVI-SPL offers value-added services including design, installation and configuration, and professional readiness assessments such as network assessment and room readiness. In addition, AVI-SPL will support Surface Hub customers post-installation with system monitoring and management, enhanced warranty and support services, and end-user training.

Conclusion

Frost & Sullivan monitors how AVI-SPL has demonstrated clear and effective execution on its growth strategy. While the overall AV integration industry has gone through a major upheaval, AVI-SPL has been able to grow successfully by balancing its core systems integration business with a keen focus on investing in a broad range of next generation collaboration software and services.

Frost & Sullivan is proud to recognize AVI-SPL with the 2016 Company of the Year Award.



Significance of Company of the Year To receive the Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award requires a market participant to demonstrate excellence in growth, innovation, and leadership. This kind of excellence typically translates into superior performance in three key areas: demand generation, brand development, and competitive positioning. These areas serve as the foundation of a company’s future success and prepare it to deliver on the two criteria that define the Company of the Year Award (Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact).

Understanding Company of the Year As discussed above, driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all play a critical role in delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however, must ideally be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on visionary innovation to enhance customer value and impact.



Key Benchmarking Criteria For the Company of the Year Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated two key factors: Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact.

Visionary Innovation & Performance Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios Through Mega Trends Criterion 3: Implementation Best Practices Criterion 4: Blue Ocean Strategy Criterion 5: Financial Performance

Customer Impact Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Best Practice Award Analysis for AVI-SPL Decision Support Scorecard To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Scorecard. This tool allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze performance, according to the key benchmarking criteria listed in the previous section, and to assign ratings on that basis. The tool follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation; ratings guidelines are illustrated below.

RATINGS GUIDELINES

The Decision Support Scorecard is organized by Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact (i.e., the overarching categories for all 10 benchmarking criteria; the definitions for each criteria are provided beneath the scorecard). The research team confirms the veracity of this weighted scorecard through sensitivity analysis, which confirms that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies.



The results of this analysis are shown below. To remain unbiased and to protect the interests of all organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key players as Competitor 2 and Competitor 3.

Measurement of 1–10 (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)

Company of the Year

Visionary Innovation & Performance

Customer Impact Average Rating

AVI-SPL 9.4 9.0 9.2

Competitor 2 8.7 8.9 8.8

Competitor 3 7.6 7.8 7.7

Visionary Innovation & Performance Criterion 1: Addressing Unmet Needs Requirement: Implementing a robust process to continuously unearth customers’ unmet or under-served needs, and creating the products or solutions to address them effectively

Criterion 2: Visionary Scenarios Through Mega Trends Requirement: Incorporating long-range, macro-level scenarios into the innovation strategy, thereby enabling “first to market” growth opportunities solutions

Criterion 4: Implementation Best Practices Requirement: Best-in-class strategy implementation characterized by processes, tools, or activities that generate a consistent and repeatable level of success.

Criterion 3: Blue Ocean Strategy Requirement: Strategic focus in creating a leadership position in a potentially “uncontested” market space, manifested by stiff barriers to entry for competitors

Criterion 5: Financial Performance Requirement: Strong overall business performance in terms of revenues, revenue growth, operating margin and other key financial metrics

Customer Impact Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar offerings in the market

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience Requirement: Customers feel like they are buying the most optimal solution that addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a positive experience throughout the life of the product or service



Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality

Criterion 5: Brand Equity Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty

Decision Support Matrix Once all companies have been evaluated according to the Decision Support Scorecard, analysts can then position the candidates on the matrix shown below, enabling them to visualize which companies are truly breakthrough and which ones are not yet operating at best-in-class levels.

High

Low

Low High

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Visionary Innovation & Performance

Competitor 2

Competitor 3

AVI-SPL



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards

Research Methodology Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research methodology represents the analytical rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree-view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies. Too often, companies make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission. Successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the 360-degree research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN THE CHAOS



About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages almost 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 31 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.

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