On this episode of Decision Point, the Collab Collective’s Craig Durr is joined by Jason Moss, Head of Marketing and Ecosystems, and Christopher Jaynes, Chief Technology Officer at Acuity Intelligence Spaces, to discuss how Q-SYS is translating its platform vision into real-world outcomes. Recorded after Q-SYS Activate and ahead of ISE Barcelona 2026, the conversation examines the evolution of the Q-SYS full-stack AV platform, recent product launches, and how edge compute, cloud intelligence, and AI strategy are shaping collaboration, high-impact AV environments, and intelligent spaces.
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Craig Durr: Hey, everyone. This is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and founder of the Collab Collective, and welcome to another edition of Decision Point, which is all about insights for IT decision makers.
This is where we have a chance to help you ask those tough questions about the products, the solutions, the technologies that you're considering putting into your own environment. And we get the experts who are behind these solutions in-house to help us with this.
It’s not one of those typical marketing webcasts. We're not going to have death by PowerPoint. It's me asking tough questions on your behalf to help you make some informed decisions.
Today, we have a really special topic. We're going to be talking to two people from Q-SYS, and I want to introduce them right now. We are hot off from their recent product announcement called Activate, and we're going to talk about the products that are coming out from there, as well as what we can expect in two weeks at ISE if you happen to be there.
So let me start off with Jason Moss. Jason, you are Head of Marketing and Ecosystems at Acuity Intelligent Spaces. This is a new expanded title. Jason, good to see you again.
Jason Moss: Great to see you, Craig. Glad to be here.
Craig Durr: And then also we have Christopher Jaynes. Christopher is the Chief Technology Officer, also of Acuity Intelligent Spaces. Chris, good to see you again.
Christopher Jaynes: Yeah, great to see you too. Thanks for having us.
Craig Durr: I am starting off kind here because this, in fact, not the first time we're sitting down and talking as a gentleman. We've done this a couple of times already, right?
Jason Moss: We have, yeah. Lucky number three.
Craig Durr: That is really great insight because this allows us to see the story move along. And in fact, we kind of get to pressure tests and understand where you are.
Let's think about this: the first time the three of us sat down was at ISE last year, 2025. At that point in time, we talked about the whole platform and why a platform approach matters. There were some great things that you were looking at with Q-SYS.
I think we were just on the cusp of talking about Acuity at that point in time, but the platform approach. Then we sat down again at Infocomm 2025 and this is where we talked about the vision really scaling and maturing and coming to bear.
And now we're at the point that we're actually seeing some really solid proof points come along. Jason, am I capturing this? Well, is this a great evolution of what we've seen here within the last 12 months.
Jason Moss: You got it, and that's why it's so fun to have these conversations with the same people again and again because we really are building a foundation here, and you really did a good job of articulating that.
Where we started was really just talking about the challenges of fragmented AV solutions that are out there. What is the need for a platform based approach?
And then at that second time, when we talked at Infocomm, it was just coming off of our Q-SYS Designer 10.0 launch that we did in May, which really articulated our Full Stack AV Platform approach of not just talking about what the problem was, but a real solution on how to fix it in the real world.
Christopher Jaynes: No, I love that. Actually, I also think there's another aspect to this, Jason, and it is fun to talk three times in a row with Craig, for sure. But we also write some blank checks that we're starting to have to cash a little true.
So what's exciting about it is everyone realizes some of the challenges you get with fragmented AV hardware focused systems, and when you bring it together in a platform, especially through technology… Technology is scalable with a focus on software, you start to be able to create new experiences and achieve things that have just really been challenges to the AV community for a very, very long time.
So our focus at this Activate, what you saw is that we are now operationalizing those promises. So part of that focus has been, “How do we put these components together and now snap on new capabilities, introduce new endpoints and new hardware platforms that then feed directly back into that platform without having to reinvent that entire wheel.
And I think the community is starting to see that flywheel starting to turn on the platform, which is really exciting.
Craig Durr: It is. The continuity momentum is there, so it's good. I've got my list of tough questions here, so I'm going to be kind of hard on you, and I hope afterwards you still forgive me. But let's dive in and talk about what you guys just recently announced.
So Activate took place January 15. There was a lot of stuff that came out of this event. I think you guys did a fantastic job. If you don't mind, I am going to lean into some of those products because there are some really exciting ones, for myself as kind of a Pro AV geek, that I really wanted to talk about a little bit.
You guys actually had a new X Class Server that you talked about. You also had a new MPA amplifier line that's coming out as well, too. I don't want to get into speeds and feeds, but do me a favor. Is this X Class really all that you are claiming that it's to be?
Jason Moss: Of course, it is not marketing fluff at all. We introduced the idea of the X Class Servers back at our Activate in May of last year, and we launched two of those. But we still had our top end core server, the Core 5200, which has been the most powerful solution of its kind on the market, really used in convention centers, theme parks, and very big installs for years. And we saw the market catching up to that and starting to bring out other solutions.
What we announced was the top end of the X Class, which is based on a Dell server off the shelf technology that we then look at and put our Q-SYS software on. And what we did is essentially doubled the amount of computing capacity that is there on this product.
And added, I know we don't want to get in this speeds and fades. We doubled things, and now we have 10 Gigabit Fiber, and redundant power sources and all the other cool things. So that was my subtle way of sliding in speeds and feeds.
Okay, but I won't stay away from that. But the whole idea is that this is a heritage business where Q-SYS, we really made our mark into the market. These are our first customers that really adopted the idea of the platform approach when you have these big, large installations, and we felt it was important to really bring out the next generation of capabilities. And that's really what this X Class Server does for us.
Craig Durr: To me, it was a real clear indication of your continuing investment in what you guys have kind of dubbed the name High Impact AV Spaces, right?
Jason Moss: Yeah, we talked about High Impact Spaces in terms of the collaboration space, but these are even beyond that. It is the hospitality, entertainment, big commercial centers, where you just need a massive amount of audio channels, data or processing capabilities. And this is a really important market for us. We want to make sure that we've had a really good leadership in and want to make sure we're maintaining that leadership and serving our customers needs with it.
Craig Durr: Good. Chris, what about the MPA amplifier line?
Christopher Jaynes: It's funny because I do feel like this launch really demonstrated the return on our investment in the platform over the past several, you know, more than a decade.
So Jason just mentioned the ability to introduce Edge Compute that just sort of blows the doors off and lets you do whatever you want to do in any venue. We also can now ask ourselves, “What parts of the platform could benefit with new hardware and innovation?” So that's an inverse approach to technology innovation than the market has traditionally taken.
It's not really like, “What are my competitors doing?” Now I need to introduce a new amplifier so that I can sell more amplifiers. It's really given this platform the thing that users love and experiences they're designing. “What do they need to continue to fill out the platform?” So that was on the MPA line for the amplifiers, that was really for us, getting into that mid power range. Introducing an amplifier that just filled that gap, and that was pretty key.
It also is kind of interesting because it's got network based amplification, but it also has an analog fallback for some of those transitional deployments, which I think is really it shows how realistic we are, but also how nice, how we're still tying it into the platform.
And just I think we all understand the value of the platform, probably at this point, but this allows you to now take that new amplifier and treat it like any other endpoint or any other peripheral that you're used to on the platform itself. It's just here it is, and we filled your gap.
Craig Durr: Okay, I like it. So it's still deeply investing in those core markets, what you're saying, but it's leveraging the platform approach to that. All right, I'll give you a good one on that one, but actually, there was another really interesting product.
Now, this one really caught my eye, and this is going to require a little bit of a deep dive for someone to explain it to me—The Room Suite Modular System. It seemed to be like a very elegant solution, combining several different boxes into a single solution in some ways, but let's break it down.
What's the space you're trying to solve for with this Room Suite Modular System?
Jason Moss: We've had a really good entry into the market in those high impact spaces… In those in the corporate environment, where big board rooms, training rooms, the visible spaces and things like that.
And the power of the platform is great, and it allows you to do so many different things, connect all the different devices because every one of these high impact spaces is a special flower, right? It's got its own unique needs. Everybody has a different way to do it, you know, all you IT professionals and AV integrators out there, there's a certain way you want to dial something in, right? And Q-SYS really allows for that.
But people are loving what we're doing, but they're just like that. It's just too much, right? You know, if I really want to get to start talking about more spaces, but I still want some of the capabilities that Q-SYS provides in that flexibility and control, I need to get into kind of the next layer down of these rooms.
Okay, so we're not talking about like huddle rooms or focus rooms or things like that, but spaces that still need a an extra level of integration, maybe control automation and being able to understand different peripherals that are in there and get that data back into the cloud of cool things that we'll be able to do there.
So essentially, what it does is, in a very simple term, the modular system combines a DSP, a network switch, and video bridging all into one box, right? So you're just reducing it, making it easier. So that's kind of from the physical side, but then looking at the expander and being able to connect that really, the magic is in the software.
And you know, we'll probably let Chris describe what we're doing by just thinking about the workflows and how to make this easier.
Christopher Jaynes: Yeah, that's really key. It's an interesting trend. Obviously, I can't help myself, but if you look back and I'll probably age myself for this comment, there was a day where you had a TomTom navigation thing on your car dashboard, and you also had an iPhone in your pocket.
Those two things became one thing pretty quickly through software. So that's the key, right? And that's why Jason just mentioned software there. We have put so much energy into professionalizing and building a world class software organization because of that observation.
And really, Room Suite Modular Systems is an example of what that means for the market is we can now take experiences that used to be built in hardware components that sat all over the table and required cables, extra power plugs, and extra network connections, put them into one box and ask the more fundamental question: What type of flexibility can we expose through software experiences from that box to the user?
So some of it does require hardware, like the companion expander, does give you some room deployment flexibility, and remember that within the solution right now. But it also gives you so much more flexibility to tie it to where you can do compute in the cloud. You can compute at the Edge, you can compute on the peripherals, and now you're running software that just reacts to users that walk into the room and want to start a Teams or a Zoom call and fire up the system quickly. So I think it's a really good example of where we are headed as a company and actually even as a market.
Craig Durr: It's really interesting because it still sounds like it does have purpose built for collaboration. This isn't just a box with that, but the software allows that level of flexibility compute where you want to compute.
Jason Moss: Yeah, and it's not just the flexibility, it's flexibility but scalability, right? So you define what you need in these kinds of next tier rooms, below the big, high impact spaces. You say, “Well, I want to deploy these rooms with these capabilities, and maybe you have 10, 20, 50 of those rooms across your enterprise or your building.
You'd be like, “Okay, instantly, I know how to do that workflow. I know how to push it out.” communicate with the cloud, come down, and you're actually not doing the traditional Q-SYS Designer Software. When you're doing it, you're going through a much more automated workflow where you can see the different peripherals that you're connecting in there.
So it's not looking at like the wide world of anything is possible, like our traditional approach with Q-SYS. It's really kind of wizarding out that, that deployment of it, but you still have the power of Q-SYS behind the scenes.
Craig Durr: That's what it sounds like. It's not sacrificing that.
Christopher Jaynes: And what it buys you is the ability to, you know, if you've got 120 student study rooms that you want to deploy systems, and you're not custom designing each one, you're really templating that experience and then managing them all at the same time and quickly doing a deployment.
And Jason's right. Sitting right behind that is the exact same compute platform that is Q-SYS, which I think is kind of compelling.
Craig Durr: You know, now, with this said, and we're talking about video collaboration as being a core workflow in these rooms, are we talking along the lines of UC certifications expectations? What do you think here?
Jason Moss: Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of a stated thing from us. You know, we have great partnerships with Microsoft, Google, and Zoom. And the intention is anytime we bring something out, is to be certified as part of those solutions, and that is all definitely part of our intention.
Craig Durr: That’s good. It's good to know that it's a priority for you because I'm sure it's a priority for this audience as well. Let's go ahead and transition then a little bit here. There were some really interesting ideas that we spoke about off camera, kind of in our green room, and it starts leaning into your new title, your new roles and the new organization, the business unit that you have or business segment.
Let's frame this right now. Let's talk about what it means to be part of the Acuity Intelligent Spaces business group and what does that play into a strategy or point of view of how you're addressing this market right now?
Jason Moss: The last time we were talking was we were just acquired by Acuity, and then we had gotten a little deeper. Since then, Chris and I have taken on expanded roles within the Acuity organization, where Chris is the CTO for Acuity Intelligent Spaces, and I'm the Marketing Ecosystem for that same group, as is obvious in our titles. But what does that mean?
So Acuity Intelligent Spaces, inside of Acuity, has all of our solutions that include the AB solutions that come from QSC, our Distech Controls solutions that is building management solutions in Atrius, which is our cloud based solutions that are looking at building performance, energy sustainability, facilities, management and data that’s big in the future. So Chris and I are extremely lucky to be in these new roles because as we're thinking about the possibility of bringing all these different technologies together is thinking about the place.
What do we mean by place? We mean like, the workplace or the campus, or the hospital, the casino, right in a hospitality center. It's like, “What is the place? What is the purpose of that place?” And where they're doing inside those places or a bunch of different individual spaces. Since this is focused on it, we'll talk about the workplace.
There's the high impact spaces, there's the focus rooms, there's all the different meeting rooms we talked about, but there's a lot of spaces outside of that. There's the cafeteria where you may want to have background music, there's the lobby where you want to impress your clients and set a nice ambiance for your employees that are coming in. There's the collaborative open spaces and hot desking and things like that.
And what we're really excited about is that once we take the Q-SYS platform that kind of looks at… We'll call front of the office, and then you have Distech Controls, which really looks at the back of the office, and then you combine it with a cloud based software, and some of the information that we get from Atrius. We start to be able to add applications across these spaces and even up to the level of these places, the workplace, right? And all these different spaces connected.
And what do you want to do? Do you want to listen to background music? Do you want to have noise masking? Do you want to do a collaboration? Do you want to have data and occupancy? These are all applications that can now come together under this singular roof. So when we talk about this, trying to break it down in a simple way, of places, spaces, and applications. What are the right things we need?
Christopher Jaynes: Yeah, and I love that because it not only simplifies the way to think about these applications that emerge typically in silos, but now that now it emerging context as part of a bigger platform play that says, “Look, if I'm designing background music, that's an application, but it might be for the enterprise in a very specific way at a certain space in that place that's the tower in Philadelphia, or wherever we're doing business.”
I find that it allows us to inform how we, in fact, shape and innovate, the technology to align to the problems that sit in those three stacks, those three spaces.
Craig Durr: It's interesting. You can almost frame this as… This is a proven roadmap to talk about outcomes, not necessarily talking about, I'm selling Room A or box B. The application is playing into the spaces, playing into the places. It really has a nice outcome path through it, right?
Jason Moss: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things we say is a place plus a space plus an application equals a solution or an experience, right? So let's break that down.
Let's say our place is the campus, right? It's an educational setting. The space is a lecture hall. You know what's there, but there's a couple applications in there. It could be a lecture capture recording. It could be a remote video, different USB searching. But what's the experience?
The experience is that once you combine all those things, and you're thinking about the context of where you are, that place, the specific space, and what you're trying to do there, what applications are needed, then you can really focus on that. What is that outcome for the student, but also for the professor, as well as for the AV administrator and the tech?
You can say, “Okay, I understand all these three things, what is the outcome I'm trying to drive?” And it's a great way to break it down and really to focus on those outcomes. So really glad you mentioned that.
Christopher Jaynes: I just want to say that that's a holistic approach to problem solving, and it's how we approach the Microsoft Experience Center one that we just showcased at Activate.
Craig Durr: I was gonna ask about that. It really piqued my interest when I saw it during the Activate presentation. Tell me more about that.
Christopher Jaynes: Yeah, it's really exciting. It's a mindset shift really, right? You want to approach the entire experience of walking into a place like that, Experience Center one, and regardless of the individual applications. What's the holistic experience of when I walk from one space to another within that place? What experiences are unfolding for me and being driven by AV?
It's a completely different view than what applications do we want to deliver and who's building them and going to get them installed. It's top down, experiential delivery from an AV platform. And you really do need both two things to do that correctly. You need the platform, of course, you also need a holistic backbone for data and architecture that can support that because it's really about data interchange across these different scales.
In the old days, if you wanted to manage a building, the data of the building would sit maybe in the building controllers like a Distech and be very disparate from the AV systems sitting in the rooms. That's no longer the case.
Craig Durr: And this ties into your larger AI strategy that you shared with us in previous conversations, too. Now that you get these data from these different points consolidating in a cloud environment, there's a lot of possibilities there.
Christopher Jaynes: Yeah, Jason used the word lucky with our new roles. I feel really lucky in a couple ways. One is the hottest area of AI right now, it turns out, is really sitting partly in the AV world. It's physical AI, it's embodied AI, it's how AI touches our physical space. Well, guess what the AV world is? It’s where we are the technologists that bring experiences to the physical world. We should be the ones to help shepherd that. I feel lucky that part of my role is to try to drive that innovation and that roadmap at AIs.
So yeah, that strategy required us to, one, build a unified data infrastructure that spans both AV like systems, but also building management systems at the same time, and then pure software experiences in the cloud through the Atrius brand. That's the way finding.
Jason mentioned energy and sustainability monitoring and analytics, so you capture that data, and you do it in a way that's consistent at global scale, secure. Now you can say, given the world of AI, what experiences can we drive? And I think it starts to really open the aperture for the world of AV, what kind of products we kind of think about at this point?
Jason Moss: Also, when you think about Q-SYS, the really the on-prem driving force of that is our cores, right? Is the compute on the Edge in our building management solution of Distech Controls. They have an eclipse controller which is roughly equivalent to, kind of like a core, the same sort, and they're both very powerful software driven Edge devices.
And all the cool things that we want to do in the cloud are fantastic, but you got to get a way to get that off the premises and up into the cloud. So really, kind of, our edge is the Edge, right? We're an edge compute company that collects all the data and information, putting it up into the cloud. But then, that doesn't just sit there in the cloud; it can then come back down into it. And because they are controllers, we can actually make things happen in real time across the build space, and that's what we're really excited about.
Christopher Jaynes: I’m glad you said that, Jason, because it's the reasoning in the cloud, but then it's the action loop back into the space that really creates really great experiences for users.
Craig Durr: I love this. I'll tell you why this is making me smile. Our audience is IT decision makers, but part of our audience is also those integrators and partners who make it happen. And one of the common questions I get is, “How can I participate? How can I enable my customers with AI solutions?”
It's everywhere, and what you're basically spoon feeding here is a platform and an opportunity to bring AI powered experiences, AI powered decisions, into the environment, leveraging AV expertise.
Christopher Jaynes: That's absolutely true, and if you do it correctly, which you know, in my world, that means agentic architectures that are responsive and open, that can talk to other AI agents or other modules. Then, you have integrators and resellers that are able to design their own experiences and leverage things that we develop in ways that are, you know, we haven't even thought of.
It's very similar to the designer story for Q-SYS in the same way. If you want to know about the physical built space and whether or not, what's the traffic ability, or whether a doorway is wide enough for me to bring a ladder to be able to get to that microphone, you can query agents In our cloud over time that'll tell you, “Yes, that's true,” and you could build entire workflows with that.
At the same time, we will be introducing our own set of products and things that help enable all those experiences.
Jason Moss: I don't want to go off the reservation too much with kind of the future talk of what we're really excited about doing, but the thing that I would say is that if you really want to do physical AI or spatial AI, it ends up becoming the norm of what you talk about.
You have to have the right conduit for that data at the edge, and you have to find a way to be able to connect to it. And I purposely say connect, not collect. There's when you're connected. You could connect both ways. If you're just collecting the data, great. You're getting information, and that's that's good. But if you really want to impact the space, you have to have that Edge compute, and you have to have that two way connection that goes back and forth.
That's what we're really excited about. That's what Q-SYS provides today with our Q-SYS Full Stack AV Platform, and that's really fundamental to the advantage that we're going to be bringing to the market.
Craig Durr: What you guys have right here talked about is pretty exciting. Now, I'm still supposed to be pretty hard on you, but I have to tell you what you're talking about in terms of these experiential moment outcomes based on tying into these larger data platforms is really great.
You know what I love? When I visited with you at Infocomm and at ISE, you actually brought that experience to the visitors in the booth. We weren't seeing demo stations; we were seeing a connected experience taking place where you walk someone through a virtual or recreated office space, virtual recreated reception area, training room and what have you. That is one of the things I think that you have done really well within these conference environments. Is this something that we're going to be expecting to see again at ISE coming in a couple of weeks?
Jason Moss: Yeah, you're gonna see more of the same, but different. Because we're really focused on going back to our conversation about places, spaces, and applications. That's what we're trying to demonstrate.
We're trying to put somebody in the context of whatever place they're in, whether it's a corporate work area, a campus environment, a hospitality situation, understanding what they want to do in that space, what kind of applications actually collecting the data. It was really fun because we did collect the data through the tours to say, like, what food, snack did everybody like? What music, song?
Craig Durr: I remember the music question.
Jason Moss: Yeah, and we were doing it in real time, live data through our cloud, and actually showing that. It's kind of fun, right? You know, it's like, “Well, how interesting is it that everybody likes bananas or the granola bar?” I guess you know it was healthy, but it just shows the magic of what we can do.
So please come and see it. It is always our tour that is reimagined. So if you saw it before, you'll see new things again, new innovations being plugged into there. We're really excited to have everybody come see what we just talked about at Activate materialize at ISE this year.
Craig Durr: This is in Barcelona. ISE, February 4th through 7th. You guys, typically, are going to probably have your oversized booth presence. I think you end up being a cornerstone of what we see on the floor out there. And I assume all these great products we talked about from Activate, people gonna have a chance to see these live?
Jason Moss: Yeah, absolutely. And they're not just seeing them live; they're seeing them in the situation. That's right. So it's not just like looking at a box and checking it out because the magic of what we do is the experience we deliver around the software.
Craig Durr: And that tour we talked about, they actually can get online now and start pre-booking their time there, right? You gave me a URL, which we'll put on the screen down below. But QSYS.com/ISE is gonna have all the information about that?
Jason Moss: Yes, absolutely. Keep going back to that, if you can't make it to Barcelona because we'll do recordings of the tour so you can see what we did. And if you didn't get a chance to see what we announced at Activate, you can also go to QSYS.com/Activate, and see some of the more in depth. If you are thirsting for all the seeds and feeds of all the cool stuff that we just launched, it'll be there.
Craig Durr: All right. My palms are a little sweaty. I wasn't supposed to kind of show emotions on this, but you guys have me excited. There was a lot of great stuff you guys brought to market here in this last week at activate.
My first chance to see it will be at ISE myself. So I am looking forward to that opportunity as well. I'm gonna, I think it's time to wrap this one up. I'm going to mark this that I think you guys passed some of these hard questions. I don't think I was too tough on you, actually.
Jason Moss: No, we'll still have coffee with you, and maybe even a drink or two.
Craig Durr: We want to celebrate what's taking place here. But anyway, Jason, Chris, I want to appreciate you taking the time. I know you're very busy. It's a very short window between last week and ISE. So thank you for queuing up with the expected ISE, talking us through some of these products that were recently announced, and helping us understand that larger, broader acuity strategy of intelligence bases. I appreciate it. Thanks.
All right, everyone. This is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Decision Point. We'll bring you some more great insights in the future, and be sure to check out these guys at ISE. Take care, everyone!