Presenting Your AV Requirements to the IT Team
AV Systems Designer Justin Rexing, M.S., CTS-D, ISF-C, DMC-E-4K, and IT and AV Systems Engineer Paul Zielie, CTS-D, CTS-I, share their tips for working with IT counterparts in higher education during a recent Learning Tech Manager’s Power Hour with AVIXA. Watch the full conversation here.
Justin Rexing: Higher Ed audiovisual and IT staff have the same goals. We all must provide solutions for faculty, staff, and students. We are partners in this battle.
Let us say that I met with a group of Faculty and they wanted to use Apple TVs, their reasons are sound, and it would provide a better experience in the classroom. We come up with a design, and we run that by our internal groups such as networking and the security group, and we all come to a common solution to meet their needs. If an internal group says no, they are not saying no to the AV designer, they are saying no to that group of Faculty. The key here is communication and instilling buy-in among the internal IT groups providing said solution.
Communicate that need and make that network engineer understand, make the security lead understand. Is this something we can support at an exponential and scalable level?
Ask the IT team, what is your recommendation of meeting this client’s needs that also fits your security posture? And then start the conversation at that point. For example, we do not allow Bonjour for the discovery of Apple TVs. That is done over Bluetooth to initiate that connection and Apple TVs are always on the wired network. We have an enterprise management solution for these devices and other Apple products. This is how we got buy-in from IT groups to support a solution that would not be a normal ‘enterprise’ solution.
Paul Zielie: Ultimately, there are two essentially opposing drivers of anything that gets added to a network infrastructure. There is the business case, what will positively affect the goals of the organization by this being included, and then there is the risk cost support side of the network.
Ultimately, what is going to be the risk cost hassle of doing this, and does that way outweigh (the positive effects)? Apple TVs have built-in things like discovery. For instance, I can come in, bring up my iPad, find the Apple TV, and go to it. But then again, so can the students in the classroom. Is that going to be an issue? Do I have to manage that? What if somebody from outside of that room accesses it?
There are operational security concerns like ports and protocols and malware. There’s ongoing firmware support and interoperability. All of these have costs.
It very well may be that IT comes back and says yes, you can have this but in addition to your $200 cost, you realize it’s going to cost $600 a year to properly support these. Or you can get this thing that costs $500, and it’ll work. These are CapEx (Capital Expenditure or what it costs to buy) versus OpEx (operating expenses or what it costs to support) arguments that become important because it is not cheap to support IT.
If you want something, it comes back to communications. You communicate why you have it, what the value of it is, why it’s important. You communicate the ports and protocols and connectivity and where the communication needs to go. Most IT organizations have a standard form in Excel where you can start to get that paperwork going.
Another tip: people are much happier to take your suggestions if you fill out the paperwork in the right form, and they don’t have to sit there and do it and do all that research. A large amount of my success is actually being willing to fill out the IT people’s
paperwork, so all they have to do is check over it and sign it, versus start a research project.
Join AVIXA for the next Learning Tech Manager’s Power Hour: Classroom of the Future on May 24. Heading into the summer break, institutions with different needs and budgets share their approach to fully implementing learning’s new normal.
About AVIXA
AVIXA™ is the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, producer of InfoComm trade shows around the world, co-owner of Integrated Systems Europe, and the international trade association representing the audiovisual industry. Established in 1939, AVIXA has more than 11,400 enterprise and individual members, including manufacturers, systems integrators, dealers and distributors, consultants, programmers, live events companies, technology managers, content producers, and multimedia professionals from more than 80 countries. AVIXA members create integrated AV experiences that deliver outcomes for end users. AVIXA is a hub for professional collaboration, information, and community, and is the leading resource for AV standards, certification, training, market intelligence, and thought leadership.