ISE 2026 in Barcelona was large in each sense: 92,170 guests over 4 days, 1,751 exhibitors, and greater than 101,000 sq. metres of present flooring.
The official theme was “Push Past”. The unofficial theme, if you happen to spent any time on the stands, was extra easy: “cease promoting me merchandise, begin fixing my issues”.
That’s why QSC’s message landed. President Jatan Shah argued that standardised assembly rooms solely keep customary in the event that they’re constructed and managed as a part of a platform, not a patchwork of units and one-off integrations. The payoff isn’t glamour—it’s fewer variables, sooner rollouts, and fewer help friction.
QSC’s “locations, areas, functions” argument (and why it issues)
Talking with UC At this time on the QSC stand at ISE, Jatan pointed again to a framework the corporate launched at its Activate launch occasion in January.
“A whole lot of the options in AV are considered by way of functions—particular functions based mostly on completely different merchandise doing audio, video, management, and so forth,” Shah mentioned. “However these functions, whereas fixing particular issues, exist within the context of a selected area. They aren’t discrete. They don’t exist in their very own silos.”
It’s an issue most enterprises already really feel. Assembly rooms don’t dwell in isolation; they sit on company networks, underneath safety insurance policies, with helpdesks anticipated to help them remotely. The extra rooms you deploy, the extra these “little exceptions” flip into every day operational drag.
That is why Shah retains speaking about platforms. The worth isn’t simply in what occurs through the assembly. It’s in what occurs the remainder of the time: deployment, monitoring, configuration drift, and what you possibly can (or can’t) automate.
The place RoomSuite suits: repeatable rooms with out going full bespoke
Q-SYS has a status for dealing with complicated areas. The trade-off, traditionally, is that the pliability can really feel heavyweight if what you really want is repeatability.
Q-SYS RoomSuite Modular Programs is QSC’s response to that hole. It’s designed to make medium-to-large rooms simpler to deploy constantly, utilizing a web-based, no-code workflow. As a substitute of constructing every room from scratch in Q-SYS Designer Software program, groups can lean on repeatable configurations, with central administration by way of Q-SYS Replicate. Shah mentioned:
“Q-SYS RoomSuite Modular Programs mainly lengthen the Q-SYS answer past the forms of functions and areas we’ve been concentrating on, in order that we’re offering full options to cowl the entire place.”
QSC isn’t abandoning customized rooms. It’s making an attempt to verify the “regular” rooms don’t require customized work to attain a predictable consequence. For IT groups chasing standardised assembly rooms throughout a number of websites, that’s the distinction between scaling and completely catching up.
Shah mentioned that’s precisely what he’s listening to on the stand: “Individuals are lastly seeing what’s been requested of us… ‘you guys are doing nice in these functions and these areas, however we’d prefer to see extra from you.’”
AI at ISE 2026: from intelligent options to productiveness and automation
ISE has had loads of AI demos during the last couple of years. This 12 months, the extra fascinating AI conversations had been about operations: take away steps, cut back failure charges, and make rooms really feel “prepared” as a rule.
“As a substitute of fascinated by AI as a buzzword, persons are fascinated by what issues you’re fixing and what extra you are able to do with AI.”
Then he pointed to the place he sees the dialog heading:
“What about agentic AI? Can a office be sensible sufficient to detect whether or not a room is prepared or not? Can we offer options that make it simpler for finish customers… the place the AI helps and making these experiences considerably higher?”
That “room readiness” concept is necessary for productiveness. A gathering that begins 90 seconds late as a result of the room is within the flawed state, the flawed mode, or the flawed configuration doesn’t sound dramatic in isolation—till it occurs a number of instances a day throughout an property. In that sense, AI isn’t a characteristic you showcase however a means of taking friction out of the system: fewer guide checks and fewer help calls.
The catch is that automation wants consistency. If rooms are constructed as a patchwork, AI doesn’t have a steady basis: no constant telemetry, no constant administration, and no constant coverage mannequin. If rooms are standardised underneath a platform, AI turns into simpler to use in a repeatable means.
What QSC says comes subsequent
For Shah, the trade path is already set:
“The dialog has gone from merchandise to functions, from functions to full, broad options… individuals wish to see us simply ship the outcomes.”
And he’s positioning QSC’s subsequent steps in that context:
“We have now extra thrilling options popping out—not only for collaboration functions, but in addition in business and leisure. That’s how we take into consideration Q-SYS as a full stack AV platform for audio, video, and management, enabled with cloud, with AI layered in, leveraging the info.”
ISE 2026 made one factor clear: the productiveness story in assembly rooms is more and more an automation story. And automation, as normal, is gained or misplaced on the platform beneath.
