What’s that? Time for another AVNation podcast response already?
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Tim Albright recently hosted a videocast with Crestron all about being one of those “all-in-one” brands and what it means to be full-stack. He interviews the following people:
- Eric Snider, CTI
- Brad Hintze, Crestron
The group starts by defining exactly what “full-stack” means. I’m sure you’re all familiar. It’s a term that’s been floating around the industry a lot lately. So much so that Gary and I jokingly awarded it a Best of InfoComm 2025 award for “best jargon.” Jokes aside, this term does carry meaning.
“When you can turn to a manufacturer that builds a variety of products to fit a variety of needs that a customer has, the combination of all those products together has value to the customer,” Hintze said.
For Crestron, the value here is delivering content distribution, collaboration tools and control tech for a room.
Now that we understand what full-stack means, the bigger question is: why does it matter?
The lowest level of the stack — the edge devices (UC bars, touch panels, encoders, schedulers, etc.) — all sit directly on the network. That makes them both powerful and vulnerable. Since Crestron makes the edge devices AND the control software AND the cloud layer, the pitch is that they can offer a holistic approach to security for meeting rooms and spaces.
That’s the point Eric is making in a lot of this episode. As an integrator, stitching together 10 different vendors with their own update policies, security protocols and monitoring dashboards can be a headache. Crestron is trying to take the pressure off.
The group also discussed some of the challenges that come with deploying a full-stack system.
“I think the biggest one right now is that we went through AI and big, big plans for how we’re going to change everything,” Snider said.
But that’s not the challenge. The real issue, he explained, is that people wanted technology with hefty AI support but had no idea how they wanted to harness it. In other words: Start with the goal, not the buzzword.
That leads naturally to another challenge — scalability. Some customers prefer all-in-one systems for rooms, while others prefer modular setups. Updating an all-in-one is a lot harder because you often have to toss the whole thing when it comes time for an upgrade. So how does a full-stack provider like Crestron remain scalable?
“We have technology platforms that we’ve built around that you can continue to build and add features to without doing a full-on reset,” Hintze said.
He used DM-NVX as an example — even if you installed a device five years ago, you still get to utilize the latest software.
“At the end of the day, we just want to be the partner of choice for that customer,” Hintze continued. “We do that by making these investments.”
That’s the promise. But even in this conversation, there was acknowledgment that no manufacturer can (or should) do it all alone. Crestron may be pushing the “full-stack” message, but the real value for customers often comes when those stacks play nicely with others. Seeing Crestron do both is something that I think the industry is asking for.
To watch the full episode and listen to the entire conversation, you can do that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7sXwOEJCGU
