What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Revolutionizing Conference Rooms: Netspeek's AI Innovations Transforming AV Integration and Communication Platforms
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Ever wondered how conference room technology could be revolutionized with the power of AI? Join us for an intriguing discussion with Sam Kennedy, the mastermind behind Netspeek, a startup on the verge of transforming the AV industry. With nearly 30 years of experience in UCAV, Sam unveils LENA, Netspeek's cutting-edge AI tool set to redefine how we integrate AV and IT. Discover how LENA promises to streamline installations, enhance troubleshooting, and automate routine room checks, all while providing advanced analytics that empower platforms like Teams, Zoom, and WebEx. Sam's insights into the proprietary technology driving Netspeak offer a glimpse into a future where conference rooms are more efficient and reliable than ever before.
As we navigate the changing landscape of the AV industry post-COVID, the demand for video-first communication and cost-effective solutions continues to rise. This episode sheds light on how generative AI is becoming a game-changer, simplifying complex systems to meet the needs of hybrid work environments. Anticipation builds around Netspeek's debut at ISE and upcoming appearances at Enterprise Connect and Infocomm, where exciting announcements and partnerships await. Tune in to discover how Netspeek is poised to lead the charge in AI-driven transformation, marking a new era of innovation and growth in the industry.
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Hey everybody, I'm really excited for this chat with a brand new startup company in the AV arena Sam from Netspeak. How are you? I'm doing great, great to be here and brand new. You've been stealth mode for some time, but this is one of your coming out parties, so maybe you could introduce yourself a little bit about your background and what's the big idea behind Netspeak.
Speaker 2Sure, dad. So again, my name is Sam Kennedy. I've been in the UCAV industries for almost 30 years 28 years, I think, to be kind of close there and I spent a lot of my time. I spent over 17 years at Polycom, so a lot of people will know me from there, and then I spent about three years at Crestron and lots of different variety of roles. But what's brought me here today to talk to you is I did start at this new company called Netspeak. We are a startup. You is, I did start at this new company called Netspeak. We are a startup, but what we're looking to do is bring generative AI to support conference rooms and the technology inside of conference rooms.
Speaker 2So, as we know that there's been a lot of noise around AI and that everybody's excited around AI, but I think that we'll be one of the first companies out there that is taking that concept of generative AI and leveraging it to keep my conference rooms up and running at a much higher percentage. And so we're really taking that. As collaboration spaces are scaling, as there's more rooms out there than there have ever been before, and as IT has taken over more, taken over the support of these spaces, their knowledge base of a generalized IT person to support spaces. They don't have those nuances that you and I have been doing this forever. They just don't know a lot of those details, and so we're building this tool and this engine to help and support them to keep these rooms up and running at a much greater pace or much greater percentage.
Speaker 1Wow, wonderful mission, and anyone who's worked in any all setting can appreciate the pains around AV and IT and UC integration, setup, maintenance, provisioning. I mean, there's so many issues. So what is your product or solution? What does it do exactly? What's the service and who is it targeted at?
Speaker 2Yeah. So again, the company is called Netspeak and the product is a cloud-based product called LENA. L-e-n-a language it stands for language enabled network administrator. You're going to hear me talk about her as a. Yeah, I really can't. L-e-n-a Language Enabled Network Administrator. You're going to hear me talk about her as a. I really can't help but personify her. She solves a lot of humanistic challenges that we've all been having to deal with in the industry, and so there's really three main use cases and focus areas for us to solve with Lena. Number one is to help with installation. So right now, we know that for lots of organizations who are rolling out multiple different vendors and conference rooms maybe.
Speaker 2I have, you know, one vendor who does the bar, another one who does content sharing, another one who does the monitor. Typically, there's almost always going to be three different vendors and you can add peripherals from there. We know that one of the challenges for a lot of organizations is having to bring in very highly paid people to do those installations, and so we are providing this generative AI assistance that will help make those installations easier. So one of the big main use cases is helping and supporting installations of rooms.
Speaker 2I think the biggest one is around troubleshooting the spaces and administering and the operation of a conference room. So she'll be able to do things like read logs She'll be able to do. One of the use cases that we're gonna actually demonstrate at ISE is think about those people today that have to go and do room checks every morning to make sure that the technology is up and working. We can automate a lot of that process, and so one of the things that Lena will be able to do is that we're going to demonstrate this at ISEE is the automation of a room check, and if she finds a problem during that room check, she can either automatically fix the problem or she can alert an administrator who can then walk in and fix the problem. She's not a physical person.
Speaker 1She can't literally get legs and walk through the room and play the game with us. Not yet.
Speaker 2But if it's a setting, if it's a change, we can do that. And the third key is that we bring generative AI to analytics. Since we know all the things that are happening in the conference room, we're able to provide this deeper analysis than just how many calls did I have or how many people were in the room. Think of the generative analysis that we could do, like what are my licensing? How should I add more? Should I remove more? People aren't using this product. You should add more of this particular product in this room, adding generative AI to those three installation, administration and analytics.
Speaker 1What a fantastic value prop. Congratulations. Maybe you can give us a peek behind the curtain in terms of the technology behind NetSpeak. I imagine there's an LLM your own proprietary speaker, sauce, speech rack and other frameworks a lot of time on uh.
Speaker 2This is um well over a year in development, but we've spent a lot of time on training the model um so that we get really good accuracy. This is not going out to the internet to search. It's not chat gpt where you're going to get all sorts of different information. So accuracy has been one of the really key foundations so that when she comes it it's interesting when you do have the ability to talk to her and she responds differently every time, because that's just the nature of generative AI, but the data is always the same. She's there. We spend a lot of time on her accuracy, but we've trained it to be an expert in all the different platforms, like Teams and Zoom and WebEx and many of the different manufacturers that we're all dealing with, like Neat and Poly and Sony and Barco. We also have the ability to read. We have connections and hooks into ServiceNow so we're able to not only open up tickets but read from ServiceNow. So let's say that a year ago, someone opened up a ticket and the ticket was resolved. Len is able to go there into ServiceNow, learn how this issue was resolved so if she comes across it again, she knows what the solution is and she can implement it all autonomously. So, again, it is a private, large language model with a database that we've trained and the value here there's so much value in so many levels. But the way that we've architected this is that it's all generative, so that as new technologies become available or let's say, in a room I replace one piece of gear with another, I don't have to go and rewrite any code, right? I just tell Lena hey, it's one of of gear with another. I don't have to go and rewrite any code, right? I just tell Lena hey, it's one of these devices instead of this device, and she's able to put all those. Whatever she needs to do, she's able to put that in automatically. I don't have to get. This is not an if this, then that and if something changes here, I have to reprogram the whole room. You don't have to worry about any of that. I replace one piece of technology in a room, put in a new one, and away I go.
Future Innovations in AV Industry
Speaker 2The last thing I would maybe mention, just because I know it's top of mind as it relates to AI, is just around security. This was built from the ground up with security in mind. This is a cloud-based platform. So there is no hardware. There is a piece of software. For those customers that want to be a little bit more secure, there is a piece of Edge software that would sit within the customer's environment that strips off any confidential information. I may be just the last. From an architecture perspective, we also communicate with the devices through that Edge software so we can connect back. We can also do cloud-to-cloud APIs. So that's how, say, if we are talking to a neat device, we can go through neat pulse. Where we have the cloud-to-cloud APIs, we can do SDK. So there's a lot of ways that we can communicate in a very secure manner.
Speaker 1Brilliant Well, it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can communicate in a very secure manner. Brilliant Well, it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can talk big picture for a moment. You've been around this industry for decades and you've seen all the changes and trends, the dramatic changes around COVID and, of course, the hybrid work model we're all in. Is this the best of times or the worst of times for the vendor community and AV community out there? What's your big picture, macro view on the industry and where it's headed, given that tech giants are now kind of dominating the space Microsoft, obviously, and HP, of course, through Poly, but also also there's a myriad of innovators out there. Where do you see the industry going over the next year?
Speaker 2Well, you know, as I think the scale we're still on the rise up for putting devices and enabling as many spaces as possible. I think that that trend will continue in 2025 and well beyond. I think that, pre-covid, you and I have been doing this for so long. Trying to convince people to leverage video was always a challenge, but that challenge is just continuing to erode and erode and erode Always a challenge, but that challenge is just continuing to erode and erode and erode and more people are going with a video-first mentality over a phone call, and that trend, I think, will continue, enabling as many spaces to have as much collaboration and at least as many Capabilities per room. I think that that is still on on its way up. I think that the pricing will continue. People are In order to enable as many of these spaces. It has to continue to be more cost effective and they're looking for solutions that help scale and, I think, expensive, very complicated spaces While I may have a few of those, those will continue to drop and people are looking for tools like what we're doing to help support them and scale these spaces. I think that move from AD and UC into IT just furthers that, and so I think the scale will continue to rise and I think that there'll be innovators, like what we're doing as it relates to AI.
Speaker 2Everyone's talking about AI, but up to date, we've only really seen innovations around personal assistants right, that's really been the big right co-pilot and Zoom assistant and things like that. But I think we're hopefully we're one of the ones blazing the trail of how do we leverage generative AI in a in a whole new way within our industry, and I think there will be a lot more to come. It just solves these really major problems that have plagued our industry. It's been too complex for too long and the customers are demanding simpler, simpler. I'll give you another anecdote. You know one of the before I, right before I took this job, I was meeting with a CIO who had said my rooms work 90% of the time but I'm the CIO for a Fortune 500.
Speaker 2And what keeps me up at night is that 10% of those rooms, or whatever percentage it is. I don't want to ever get a call from a CFO or my CEO or one of my colleagues that a room was down. That's what keeps me up at night as a CAO a CAO who was responsible for security and everyone's personal devices and all that his big challenge was how do I keep conference rooms up and running at a higher percentage.
Speaker 2conference rooms up and running at a higher percentage, and so the innovations of it just works. I think that is one of those areas that people are demand, like cost effective and always on. Those are the things where innovation needs to happen, and I think we're one of the ones that are helping to drive that.
Speaker 1Wonderful. I go back to the days when probably only about a third of your video calls even worked. Yeah, each required hands-on setting up with ISDN. What progress we have all made, but we're not there yet. Is it too early to ask you about maybe anecdotes or stories or customers that are leveraging Netspeak and some of the benefits that you're seeing early on?
Speaker 2So it's still a little too early. We're just announcing the product. Like I said, we've been working on this for over a year. We do expect to be generally available within the first half of 2025. So we are working with a handful of beta customers. We're looking for more. I think we're also working with.
Speaker 2It's interesting of who's interested in this. I think everyone. There's very few people that I've talked to who wouldn't be interested, who aren't interested in this, and that's it's been very wide ranging. It's been from the end customers. I think is very obvious and they definitely want it.
Speaker 2We've been talking to a lot of the hardware manufacturers and cloud platforms, but also the channels. I think that the channels are realizing that, in order to make their employees happier, that there are tools to make them more effective in their day job, and they want to bring their costs down and they want to scale their support. And so it's really been interesting that across the market, that there is just this, just that everyone wants generative AI to be an impact into our industry. They just have no one's really figured out how to make that, really figured out how to make that.
Speaker 2And so so far, you know the biggest anecdote or biggest takeaways for me so far, since I've been here and talking to externally about what we're trying to solve for with Netspeak, is that the industry is just so ready for some innovation around generative AI, around support of spaces, scale of spaces, and it it's been universal the feedback of how excited people are around because it feels like science fiction. When you see I next time I come here, I maybe I can do a demo for you or anyone's going, I see I could do a demo for them. I mean it is when you see it working in action. It feels like science fiction and and it's pretty amazing to be at this point in time to be able to be part of something that is ultimately going to be such a. It's going to be so impactful to everything.
Speaker 1Brilliant. Well, I have to give it a try for my home setup, which is, you know, almost like a conference room these days, so maybe I could give it a different voice too. Do you have different voices? I could do a Hal voice.
Speaker 2Anyway, I digress.
Upcoming Industry Events and Opportunities
Speaker 1But what's next? We have CES, so a lot of AV announcements there. Really interesting show. I know I'll be at IT Expo and Enterprise Connect and other events. But what's on your radar? What are you looking forward to?
Speaker 2Yeah, the big ones for us are is ISE is the first public showing of our company and of the product, so we will be in booth CS820 for anyone who might be at ISEE. So ISEE is definitely a big attention for us right now. Following on that, we expect to be part of Enterprise Connect in some way or the other, and obviously Infocom will be a big focus for us. So a lot of and in that timeframe we hope to make some real significant even more significant announcements about the product being available and customer usage and some key partnerships. So the next six months are gonna be really busy for us and it's a really exciting new time where we could see some innovation. So I think you're going to see a lot of announcements from us over the next few months.
Speaker 1Brilliant. We can't wait to see more, and congratulations on all the success onwards and upwards, absolutely. Thank you so much for having us and thanks everyone for listening, watching, sharing, as always. Take care.