Think about investing enormous sums in a large-format show for a classroom or boardroom at this time – solely to seek out it can’t help the collaboration instruments, safety protocols, or AI-driven purposes your organisation depends on in 5 years’ time.
That’s the danger many training establishments and enterprises try to keep away from as they navigate a market saturated with AI bulletins and speedy {hardware} innovation.
Talking to UC At the moment on the sidelines of the current ISE 2026 in Barcelona, Lance Solomon, Chief Product Officer at Promethean, urged consumers to look past headline-grabbing AI options and refocus on fundamentals.
“The tendencies are most likely ones that everybody is aware of about,” Solomon defined. “It’s adaptability, it’s safety, it’s longevity.”
In classes similar to interactive panels and digital signage, he famous, organisations are making important capital investments.
These units are anticipated to operate for 5, seven, even ten years. The problem is making certain they continue to be safe, appropriate, and related all through that lifecycle.
Massive-Format Shows As Lengthy-Time period Infrastructure
Not like laptops or smartphones, interactive shows aren’t refreshed each few years. As soon as put in on the entrance of a classroom, lecture theatre, or assembly room, they turn into core infrastructure.
That longevity is each a bonus and a stress level.
Clients are more and more asking whether or not at this time’s {hardware} will hold tempo with tomorrow’s software program. Purposes utilized in training and enterprise environments are evolving quickly. Synthetic intelligence options are being embedded into collaboration platforms, productiveness suites, and content material creation instruments at velocity.
Solomon emphasised that organisations need assurance their units will proceed to run these purposes successfully.
“So clients wish to make it possible for if this factor’s going to operate [for] 5, seven or ten years, is it going to maintain up, each from the safety of the machine, however in addition to how lengthy will the purposes proceed to run, whether or not it’s school rooms or workplaces or lecture halls.”
That query extends past processing energy.
It contains working system flexibility and ecosystem compatibility.
Trendy environments not often standardise on a single platform. Some organisations are firmly embedded in Home windows environments, others favour ChromeOS, whereas Android continues to play a big position in show know-how.
Promethean’s strategy, in response to Solomon, has been to fulfill clients the place they’re – supporting a number of working methods and permitting organisations to decide on how units are managed and deployed.
The target shouldn’t be merely to promote {hardware}, however to offer a platform that integrates easily into current IT methods.
Safety And Longevity: Two Sides Of The Similar Coin
If adaptability is one pillar of buying selections, safety is the opposite.
As shows turn into smarter and extra related, in addition they turn into potential entry factors into wider networks.
For colleges dealing with pupil information or enterprises managing confidential discussions, that danger can’t be ignored.
“I believe the most important [challenge] is safety, fairly frankly,” Solomon stated.
Safety, nonetheless, shouldn’t be a one-off characteristic – it should endure for all the lifespan of the machine.
A panel designed to final a decade should additionally help evolving safety requirements, patches, and protocols over that very same interval.
This creates a decent hyperlink between longevity and safety. {Hardware} that can’t accommodate future updates dangers changing into weak lengthy earlier than it bodily wears out.
Patrons are subsequently scrutinising distributors’ roadmaps. They need readability round software program help, replace cycles, and the way units will adapt as new cybersecurity necessities emerge.
In a local weather of accelerating regulatory scrutiny and heightened consciousness of cyber threats, safety is now not an elective further. It’s central to buying conversations in each training and enterprise markets.
In lots of circumstances, organisations additionally need flexibility in how they handle units. Some want centralised administration instruments, whereas others prioritise open integration with their current IT infrastructure.
AI Should Clear up Actual Issues
With AI dominating exhibition halls throughout ISE 2026, the temptation is perhaps to imagine that extra AI robotically equals extra worth.
Solomon disagrees.
“Firstly, [you need to ask] is the AI product fixing that?” he stated, referring to buyer ache factors. “Second is, once more, safety. There [can be] information privateness points. And the way do these options deal with information privateness?”
In different phrases, AI should tackle real wants – whether or not that’s streamlining lesson supply, enhancing assembly collaboration, or enhancing machine administration – slightly than serving as a advertising and marketing hook.
Interoperability can also be essential. Most organisations already depend on established productiveness instruments and collaboration platforms.
AI options should combine into these workflows slightly than disrupt them.
One other rising concern is whether or not AI options can coexist.
As organisations experiment with a number of AI-powered instruments, they’re more and more asking how these methods work together.
Does one platform leverage one other’s capabilities? Are information insurance policies aligned? Can instruments function inside a broader ecosystem with out creating silos?
These questions mirror a maturing market. Reasonably than chasing novelty, consumers are evaluating AI by the lens of operational match and long-term viability.
Whole Value Of Possession In An AI-Pushed Market
Value pressures are additionally shaping decision-making.
Part costs for know-how merchandise have been influenced by surging demand from AI information centres, which depend on comparable processing and reminiscence elements. This has had a knock-on impact on each enterprise and training know-how budgets.
Whereas training – significantly Okay-12 – stays extremely price-sensitive, Solomon famous that each sectors are more and more targeted on complete value of possession slightly than upfront pricing alone.
“It’s not simply the price on day one,” he defined. “It’s the price over the lifetime of the product.”
That features the expense of upgrading compute modules, adapting to new AI capabilities, and sustaining compliance with evolving safety requirements. A decrease preliminary value could show extra expensive if {hardware} requires frequent updates or early alternative.
Promethean’s current product developments, together with its D-Collection digital signage and ActivePanel 10, are designed with that lifecycle in thoughts.
The corporate is increasing past its conventional Okay-12 base into company assembly rooms and better training lecture halls, tailoring {hardware} and software program to function throughout diverse environments.
The technique displays a broader market actuality: clients need alternative, flexibility in working methods, machine administration approaches, and deployment fashions.
And so they need assurance that their funding is not going to “age out” as AI continues to evolve.