Omer Brookstein, co-founder and CEO of Xyte, explains why OpenAV Cloud is pushing the AV industry toward open cloud APIs, interoperable systems, and a future where integration is no longer reinvented project by project.
Everyone in AV talks about openness. Fewer initiatives manage to turn that ambition into something integrators, manufacturers, and end users can use in practice.
For Omer Brookstein, co-founder and CEO of Xyte [pictured below] and one of the driving voices behind OpenAV Cloud, the issue is not whether the industry wants interoperability. It is whether it can move beyond fragmented, vendor-specific approaches, and build the kind of common framework that makes interoperability predictable.
“OpenAV Cloud is an industry-wide initiative that promotes the adoption of open read-write cloud APIs to drive seamless connectivity and innovation,” he says. “Our goal is to create a seamless, interoperable, and customer-first AV ecosystem that benefits the entire value chain - from manufacturers to integrators to end users.”
The initiative was founded by BrightSign, Legrand AV, Panasonic, Shure, Sony, and Xyte, positioning itself as vendor-agnostic and industry-led. OpenAV Cloud is not being presented as a product, platform, or commercial offer. Nor, Brookstein is quick to stress, is it a standard in the formal sense.
“We actually don’t like using the word ‘standardise’,” he says. “We’re not creating a standard. We’re creating a framework - guidelines, if you will - that outline how systems communicate.”
Those guidelines cover areas such as data models, data structures, core capabilities, API structures, baseline functionality and security alignment. The aim is not to make every manufacturer’s system identical, but to make interaction with different systems feel familiar enough that integration does not have to begin from scratch every time.
For integrators, that pain is already familiar. Brookstein says conversations with the channel repeatedly return to the same issue: fragmentation.
“Integrators are still struggling with fragmentation and siloed environments,” he says. “They are dealing with multiple platforms, inconsistent APIs, and limited access to data. Every project ends up requiring custom work just to get systems to talk to each other.”
That situation may once have been accepted as part of AV’s culture, but Brookstein argues that it no longer fits the reality of the market. AV devices are now IP-based, increasingly managed by IT teams, and expected to offer the same visibility, monitoring, and interoperability as other enterprise technologies.
“An ‘isolated environment’ approach was common in the AV industry for decades,” he says. “It doesn’t hold water anymore.”
That is the commercial and cultural shift OpenAV Cloud is trying to accelerate. The initiative focuses specifically on open cloud APIs, with published guidelines going out for industry comment before being revised and finalised. A recent roundtable also highlighted the work of its technical group, including guidance around security, foundational device capabilities, taxonomy, cloud-to-cloud communications, and future device data models.
Security is not being treated as an afterthought. Brookstein says the group is aligning around enterprise-grade expectations including authentication, encryption, identity, and access control. “The goal is for AV systems to fit naturally into IT environments,” he says, “and therefore they need to align with the highest security standards.”
Yet the cloud focus does not mean every deployment will follow the same architecture. Discussions around OpenAV Cloud have already raised questions about on-premise systems, government environments, air-gapped networks, and organisations that cannot allow data to leave their estate. Brookstein accepts that this nuance matters, even while arguing that cloud is where many of the industry’s newest opportunities are emerging.
The key, he says, is to think beyond monitoring alone. Open APIs could allow digital signage systems to respond to building management triggers, room-booking platforms to move meetings when a room fault is detected, or AI tools to interact directly with AV environments.
“With open cloud APIs, one of the biggest shifts is moving away from managing each vendor separately,” he says. “Instead, you can start to get a single, unified view across your environment.”
For integrators, this changes the nature of the work. Brookstein does not claim that software disappears from the equation. In fact, he argues the opposite: software thinking becomes more important. But the complexity becomes more structured, reusable, and scalable.
“Right now, integrators spend a lot of time dealing with low-level integration challenges,” he says. “With a more consistent API layer, that effort moves into higher-level work - automation, orchestration, better user experiences.”
That shift brings new skills into focus. Understanding APIs, cloud systems, and data flows will become increasingly valuable. But Brookstein does not believe integrators need to become developers. Instead, he sees an opportunity for forward-thinking companies to deliver more valuable services around workflows, automation, data, and proactive support.
The same argument applies to manufacturers. Open ecosystems can look, at first glance, like a threat to proprietary advantage. Brookstein sees it differently.
“Openness doesn’t remove differentiation - it shifts it,” he says. “Instead of competing on how closed your system is, you compete on how good your product is.”
That shift, he argues, is being driven by end users. Customers increasingly expect AV systems to behave like IT systems: connected, manageable, and able to work across platforms. Manufacturers that expose useful APIs make their products easier to deploy, integrate, and support.
The promise inevitably touches on AI, automation, and AV-as-a-service, but Brookstein is careful not to frame these as distant fantasies. Many of the building blocks already exist, from remote monitoring and enterprise integrations to AI agents and automation platforms. What has been missing is consistency.
“That’s what’s held things back from scaling,” he says. “Once that layer is in place, things like AI and automation become much more practical and easier to implement - not theoretical.”
The next step is even broader adoption. While OpenAV Cloud has attracted dozens of members and introduced a free tier for system integrators and end users, its success still depends on wide adoption across manufacturers, integrators, consultants, and end users. Brookstein describes it as an industry effort, not something that can be led by a single vendor.
“This isn't something any single vendor can own - and that's by design. We really want every single company in the industry to take part,” he says. “We truly believe this will create a better AV ecosystem for the benefit of our entire industry.”
For Brookstein, the measure of success is not another acronym in the AV landscape. It is the point at which interoperability stops being a topic of frustration altogether.
“Success, to me, is when interoperability stops being a problem people talk about,” he says. “When it’s just expected.”
Top image credit: Blackboard/Shutterstock.com