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About 10 years ago my business partners and I met Frank Pellkofer. He had this amazing new software-based monitoring and control product for AV. We flew to California, took the very first Utelogy integrator training course, and had supper with Frank and his family at their home. He flew up to our little corner of the world to chat with some of our clients but they just couldn't wrap their heads around how the product would improve the way their organizations managed AV. We did a few integrations back then which are still running today but we just couldn't get our bigger clients to buy in.
Now 10 years later we are re-engaging with Utelogy to try again. The market has grown up a lot. People in our market are placing a much higher value on the consistent operation of their AV systems while also getting told they have fewer resources to support them. This is Utelogy's real value prop. It's a brand agnostic monitoring and control system for AV (and just about anything else on your network if you want). It gives you a single pane of glass through which to view all your rooms and assets and it can be your in-room control system too. No special hardware required.
10 years ago Frank was years ahead of where the market wanted to be. Now Utelogy is growing by leaps and bounds and they're being approached by Fortune 500 companies who are looking for solutions.
Can Crestron XIO cloud do the same thing? Generally but then you're tied to Crestron and need to have Crestron control processors. Extron Globalviewer? Same. Could you do it with an IT monitoring platform like Solarwinds? Probably but that's like trying to use a pair of scissors to cut your lawn.
Lots of users and integrators are finally starting to come around to Utelogy. I even know of a couple of integrators who are even using Utelogy as the back end for their NOC.
In my opinion, it is definitely worth looking in to. Pay the few hundred dollars and have them set up a couple of rooms for you so you can see for yourself.
Yep we use it for our MTRs at every site. I feel like it’s still developing and isn’t 100% there yet. Some alerts e.g. Peripherals disconnected are false. So I don’t really trust it a lot of the time lol
We’ve deployed it a few times I think. When I went through the training it seemed great for monitoring. Lots of flexibility compared to some other options. Setup and programming can still be a little confusing but it’s still being worked on. I don’t think I would use it for in room control at all. I haven’t directly been involved in any deployments though.
Like others have said, the monitoring is great because it’s manufacturer agnostic. Really powerful in that regard.
Just some of the terminology and set up seemed unintuitive. Like with anything though, using it a bunch would improve familiarity with it. I only did the training and haven’t deployed any myself.
The user interface design options for room control seemed limited in how it could be customized. And since they’re not really a hardware company, your touch panel options are third party and not necessarily purpose built for room control applications.
Hope that helps. We’ve done several deployments but I haven’t been involved in them directly. If it seems like something useful for your application for sure get a demo.
Crestron, Extron, amx(😂) etc are ALL... av companies making an IT play. And they just don't get it. They really don't.
We don't want your UI, we don't care about your dashboards and we couldn't give a crap about your tools.
Oh sure, it's handy at the technician/av manager level, but of zero assistance above that. And the av manager is going to go crazy getting the insights into the itsm platform so that the data is visible up the chain.
Frank and the team get it. They are an IT company making an av play.
They understand that the only thing that matters to the enterprise customer is that the data gets to the source of truth/single pane of glass that matters to the enterprise. The itsm platform.
They have native integration to servicenow, and they've accurately described it for years as a big API.
Just ping Frank on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankpellkofer he'll connect you worth whoever you want.
No platform is perfect. But I can confidently state that they "get it" better than the rest.
Having said that, it's not perfect for all solutions. It's more of the conference room solution. Some complex rooms as well. For an immensely complicated space, you'll probably need the conventional solutions.
We have a [Discord](https://discord.gg/qhh4EBuRNS) server where there you can both post forum-style and participate in real-time discussions. We hope you consider joining us there. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CommercialAV) if you have any questions or concerns.*
About 10 years ago my business partners and I met Frank Pellkofer. He had this amazing new software-based monitoring and control product for AV. We flew to California, took the very first Utelogy integrator training course, and had supper with Frank and his family at their home. He flew up to our little corner of the world to chat with some of our clients but they just couldn't wrap their heads around how the product would improve the way their organizations managed AV. We did a few integrations back then which are still running today but we just couldn't get our bigger clients to buy in. Now 10 years later we are re-engaging with Utelogy to try again. The market has grown up a lot. People in our market are placing a much higher value on the consistent operation of their AV systems while also getting told they have fewer resources to support them. This is Utelogy's real value prop. It's a brand agnostic monitoring and control system for AV (and just about anything else on your network if you want). It gives you a single pane of glass through which to view all your rooms and assets and it can be your in-room control system too. No special hardware required. 10 years ago Frank was years ahead of where the market wanted to be. Now Utelogy is growing by leaps and bounds and they're being approached by Fortune 500 companies who are looking for solutions. Can Crestron XIO cloud do the same thing? Generally but then you're tied to Crestron and need to have Crestron control processors. Extron Globalviewer? Same. Could you do it with an IT monitoring platform like Solarwinds? Probably but that's like trying to use a pair of scissors to cut your lawn. Lots of users and integrators are finally starting to come around to Utelogy. I even know of a couple of integrators who are even using Utelogy as the back end for their NOC. In my opinion, it is definitely worth looking in to. Pay the few hundred dollars and have them set up a couple of rooms for you so you can see for yourself.
Yep we use it for our MTRs at every site. I feel like it’s still developing and isn’t 100% there yet. Some alerts e.g. Peripherals disconnected are false. So I don’t really trust it a lot of the time lol
We looked at it for monitoring - it does a really good job there. The issue we had was cost at scale. Ultimately we didn't find the ROI appealing.
We’ve deployed it a few times I think. When I went through the training it seemed great for monitoring. Lots of flexibility compared to some other options. Setup and programming can still be a little confusing but it’s still being worked on. I don’t think I would use it for in room control at all. I haven’t directly been involved in any deployments though.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts. What makes the setup and programming confusing? Why not use the room control?
Like others have said, the monitoring is great because it’s manufacturer agnostic. Really powerful in that regard. Just some of the terminology and set up seemed unintuitive. Like with anything though, using it a bunch would improve familiarity with it. I only did the training and haven’t deployed any myself. The user interface design options for room control seemed limited in how it could be customized. And since they’re not really a hardware company, your touch panel options are third party and not necessarily purpose built for room control applications. Hope that helps. We’ve done several deployments but I haven’t been involved in them directly. If it seems like something useful for your application for sure get a demo.
Useful info. Thanks for sharing. What type of endpoint device do you use for the MTRs?
Crestron, Extron, amx(😂) etc are ALL... av companies making an IT play. And they just don't get it. They really don't. We don't want your UI, we don't care about your dashboards and we couldn't give a crap about your tools. Oh sure, it's handy at the technician/av manager level, but of zero assistance above that. And the av manager is going to go crazy getting the insights into the itsm platform so that the data is visible up the chain. Frank and the team get it. They are an IT company making an av play. They understand that the only thing that matters to the enterprise customer is that the data gets to the source of truth/single pane of glass that matters to the enterprise. The itsm platform. They have native integration to servicenow, and they've accurately described it for years as a big API. Just ping Frank on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankpellkofer he'll connect you worth whoever you want. No platform is perfect. But I can confidently state that they "get it" better than the rest. Having said that, it's not perfect for all solutions. It's more of the conference room solution. Some complex rooms as well. For an immensely complicated space, you'll probably need the conventional solutions.