SIGNAL Executive Video: Treating Collaboration as a Mission Requirement

Crestron, a manufacturer and distributor of audiovisual technology and unified communications, provides meeting-room capabilities to help agencies collaborate effectively and efficiently.

Joe Schauder, senior director of federal government at Crestron, sat down with SIGNAL Media’s Kimberly Underwood to talk about the company’s efforts to provide secure audiovisual communications technology for the federal market.

Schauder said secure collaboration is critical in the age of remote work, especially between federal agencies sharing classified information. Crestron’s tools focus on how the meeting rooms function as a whole.

“Delays or breakdowns in collaboration can directly impact mission outcomes,” Schauder said during an interview for SIGNAL Media’s Executive Video series. “Secure collaboration enables agencies to share the right information with the right people at the right time.”

Schauder also stressed the importance of standardization across different meeting rooms that may have different equipment. Crestron’s products handle displays, cameras, microphones and presets, allowing the unified communications platform to focus on the meeting itself.

“The top requirement is rooms that just work with minimal steps and no adapter or cable drama,” Schauder said. “Users are asking for one-touch meeting joints, consistent UI [user interface], reliable content-sharing and interoperability with existing room gear.”

Schauder said agencies look for audiovisual technologies that scale like network services and can expand without physically tearing down walls. Crestron’s DM NVX product, which was developed nine years ago, is still compatible with the products today through a free firmware upgrade.

Another important audiovisual capability these days is the ability to support hybrid meetings, he stressed. Intelligent cameras will automatically zoom in on a participant speaking in a conference room so remote participants don’t miss the conversation.

Schauder also said Crestron’s NVX is NIAP-certified and utilizes FIPS-certified encryption to protect sensitive data-sharing and align with zero-trust policies.

“Treat collaboration as a mission system, not a convenience,” Schauder said. “Collaboration environments, meeting rooms, UC [unified communications] platforms, secure video, cross-agency communications. They're no longer support tools. This is how agencies coordinate operations, share intelligence and make time-critical decisions.”