By Vijay Sharma, Managing Director, Optoma Techonology India Pvt Ltd.
There are huge changes taking place in the world of enterprise AV technology deployment and management. Today’s meeting room cameras are able to follow active speakers, and the advanced microphones can recognise the voice of individuals and provide optimum sound recording. The workplace AV that used to be under the responsibility of facilities managers as an ancillary role has started to attract greater attention from IT heads. This change will be very evident in 2026 when smart, integrated, and intelligent AV systems are increasingly being used in the workplace.
For years, audiovisual equipment sat somewhat apart from the core IT conversation, treated more like furniture than infrastructure. That’s changed. According to Futuresource’s Understanding Enterprise AV report, published in July 2026, 66% of organisations now see AI capability as an important factor when evaluating new AV solutions, a clear signal that AV decisions are increasingly being made with the same strategic lens IT teams apply to any other critical system. Integrated meeting room systems are becoming the enterprise standard rather than a nice-to-have upgrade, and hybrid working, AI integration, and workplace transformation are now cited as the leading drivers shaping enterprise AV investment.
Meeting room AV remains the single largest category of commercial AV spending for enterprise organisations in 2026, and the typical enterprise conference room AV budget this year is significantly higher than it was back in 2019. What’s particularly encouraging is the direction this spending is heading: more than 69% of enterprises plan to increase their investment in AI meeting technology, recognising that today’s rooms need to do far more than simply display a screen. The broader hybrid meeting room collaboration hardware market is itself growing at an 11% compound annual rate, a pace that reflects genuine, sustained enterprise appetite rather than a passing trend.
Perhaps the most exciting shift for IT teams to embrace is how deeply AI has woven itself into AV hardware, rather than sitting as a bolt-on afterthought. Cameras now automatically track and frame speakers as they move around a room. Microphones with intelligent beamforming isolate the active voice and gently suppress background noise. Auto-framing ensures remote participants see a properly composed image of the people they’re meeting with, not a wide, empty shot of a boardroom. These capabilities are now built directly into hardware from established manufacturers, meaning IT teams no longer need to stitch together separate software licences just to get genuinely intelligent meeting experiences.
Beyond the meeting itself, AI is also powering live transcription, automated meeting summaries, action item capture, and real-time translation, turning every meeting room into a more productive and genuinely more accessible space. Google’s July 2026 expansion of Gemini across Google Meet brought AI-powered note-taking, multilingual meeting translation, and intelligent summaries directly into enterprise workflows, while Zoom’s March 2026 AI Companion updates introduced agentic capabilities that can automate meeting preparation and post-meeting tasks entirely on their own.
One of the most valuable lessons IT teams are learning in 2026 comes from how spaces are actually being used. At Enterprise Connect 2026, Cisco’s Rich Bayes observed that offices often place just one or two people in conference rooms built for eight, a pattern that points toward a genuinely useful insight: enterprises need more small, well-equipped video rooms rather than simply adding more gear to large ones. This is a wonderfully practical shift in thinking, moving IT teams’ focus away from “what hardware should we buy” and toward “what kind of spaces does our workforce actually need.” As one industry consultant noted at the same event, once room builds are standardised, hardware becomes less of a sticking point, and the real conversation shifts to which platforms run smoothly across every space. What makes this moment especially worth embracing is the growing focus on meeting equity, ensuring in-person and remote participants have an equally good experience. High-quality video, clear audio, and seamless content sharing are increasingly treated as baseline expectations rather than premium features.
Looking ahead, industry analysts anticipate spatial audio arrays, AR and VR collaboration spaces, and AI assistants that capture action items and push them directly into project management tools, developments that promise to make hybrid collaboration feel even more natural over time.
Integration is another area where rethinking pays off handsomely. Modern meeting room technology increasingly connects with broader workplace-management platforms, working alongside access control, occupancy sensors, digital signage, and building-management systems. This means AV is no longer a standalone system IT manages in isolation; it’s becoming a genuine extension of the connected, intelligent workplace, with the strongest opportunities sitting at the intersection of hardware, AI, cloud management, and workplace analytics.
For enterprise IT teams, 2026 offers a genuinely exciting invitation: treat workplace AV as a core pillar of digital strategy rather than a peripheral concern. The technology itself has matured beautifully: cameras that understand a room, microphones that understand a voice, and AI that quietly handles the administrative weight of a meeting so people can focus on the conversation itself. Teams that embrace this shift thoughtfully, pairing smarter room design with AI-native hardware and connected platforms, are positioning their organisations to get genuinely more value from every square foot of meeting space they own.
The workplace of 2026 isn’t simply more digital; it’s more thoughtfully designed, more intelligent, and more inclusive of everyone in the conversation, wherever they happen to be sitting. For IT teams willing to rethink their approach to AV, this is a genuinely rewarding moment to lead that change.