On this episode of Direct from the Expo, the Collab Collective's Craig Durr speaks with Jason Moss, SVP of Marketing and Ecosystem at QSC, and Chris Jaynes, CTO of Q-SYS, live from ISE 2025. They discuss the recent acquisition of QSC by Acuity Brands and what it means for the future of intelligent spaces, AV & IT integration, and workplace collaboration.
Craig Durr: Hey, everybody. This is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. And I want to welcome you to ISE 2025 Direct from the Expo. We have a chance to talk to some of the thought leaders and the influencers within the industry, bringing you some of the most exciting solutions taking place here at ISE 2025.
Let me introduce you to some of my friends–Jason Moss, QSC, SVP of Marketing and Ecosystem. How are you doing, Jason?
Jason Moss: I'm doing great.
Craig Durr: Great to have you.
And Chris Jaynes, who's the CTO of Q-SYS. Hey, how are you doing?
Chris Jaynes: Good, Craig.
Craig Durr: Hey, let me go ahead and dive in with some questions. Jason, I'll start with you. So what's on top of mind right now is the recent acquisition of QSC by Acuity. Tell me more; what's going on there? I'm trying to understand the fit between these partnerships.
Jason Moss: It's a good question. A lot of people have asked that, but we're really excited by it. And we think this is a really compelling combination of two different companies. So Acuity Brands just completed their acquisition of QSC. We just did that about a month ago at the beginning of January. And Acuity Brands Lighting is known for their commercial lighting technology, the largest in North America. But they also have two different groups: their lighting business and their Acuity Intelligent Spaces. QSC will be part of Acuity Intelligent Spaces, and what's great inside of Acuity Intelligent Spaces, they have these groups including Distech, which has BMS building management systems, and Atrius, which is looking at data in the cloud and wayfinding and other different things that you use to look at that space. And what they do is they really understand how a building operates. So looking at traditionally–energy consumption, lighting, managing air conditioning, HVAC, all those things. But then, with the addition of QSC and the Q-SYS solution, you're now really not just thinking about how the building operates, but what the people are doing inside of the building. What kind of experiences? So once you combine those two together, you're really putting together a compelling combination for the future growth of the industry.
Craig Durr: That's really interesting. Well, okay, Chris, help me understand this, because what you're talking about here is this really interesting bridging between two really important organizations, IT and facilities or real estate. Tell me how this technology works.
Chris Jaynes: Yeah, that's a really good observation. And it couldn't be better timed because we're in the middle of this great rethink about real estate strategies for the enterprise. How do you more efficiently utilize your space? How do you more effectively heat your building? How do you encourage collaboration in those spaces? Those questions have always been attacked from two different sides of the same fence that now is no longer true. So data that and insights that come from one side can drive experiences on the other. And we couldn't be more excited. It allows us to build new end user experiences and innovation in a new way.
Craig Durr: I love it. You know, it's great that you're talking about experiences because that's a great segway to what you guys are doing here at the show. So your booth, the Q-SYS booth has always been, for me, this very experiential–It's almost like Disneyland, and I love it. And the cues that you guys have in front, because people really want to see what's going on. What are you guys doing this year at your stand?
Jason Moss: Yeah, we're continuing on with a new tradition that we're being known for, as you mentioned, kind of these experiential tours that we've been doing. It was after the pandemic when we're engaged here at ISE, and there's so much technology that we want to talk about. We love bits and bytes and cables plugging into everything, and stuff like that. But that's not really what people want to see. They want to know what they get out of it? Where are the outcomes?
And it's really hard to explain all this technology unless you just experience it. So what we really try to do is get people in and just experience some different fun things. And so on our tour this year, we have four different areas as you walk through. You start off in a hospitality lobby that gets you immersed in there. You'll walk through our VisionSuite, which really is focused on collaboration and our computer vision technologies, and you'll see what is behind the scenes that a network admin might be seeing and managing across all that. And then you have a fun space at the end, which is kind of like what we call the spaces in between all these other places that are in an office that you might be engaging with.
Craig Durr: So this is all exciting. Let's go ahead and dive a little bit deeper in each one. Why don't we start with the lobby? So this is the beginning of how people get to experience your business. For example, it's probably important what you said forward that takes place in that lobby space.
Jason Moss: Yeah, so just like what our customers think about whether that be a corporate office or a retail event or a venue or something like that, you want to make a first impression right away. So we want to get people in, understand the technology, but engage with them real fast. A little fun experiential things that we collect some data on and really we think about, even if it is a corporate lobby, it's really a hospitality space. That's where people are going to, if you're coming into the office, you want to be taken care of. So that's where you start off.
Craig Durr: I love it. Now, let's go to the next one. So the all hands space that you have is featuring the vision technology, which was based upon an acquisition you guys did a couple of years ago. Tell me about what's taking place in this.
Chris Jaynes: Yeah, VisionSuite for me is exciting because it's driven by AI. But it's Microsoft Teams certified and Google Meet certified. And it's also native as part of the Q-SYS platform. So you can manage and deploy the system as you do every other endpoint with access.
I think what's exciting about it is it supports multi presenter tracking. It's a multi-camera system, and it uses AI to take things like audio signals from the room to better track and create seamless experiences for end users in these high impact spaces, creates more of an egalitarian experience for the remote users and those that are in the room.
Craig Durr: And it's using multi-camera technology. It's using audio positioning to find what people are. You guys even set up certain zones so that it triggers activity within the space itself, right?
Chris Jaynes: Yeah. Well, we've been using the word experience a lot. And I love it because that's really what matters, right? All the technology is great until it triggers events or has action that allows actionable outcomes in the space.
So if I walk to a whiteboard, should a particular camera zoom in on me, because now we want to capture that text for remote participants. Or if I go to the podium, does that mean that now, PowerPoint should fire up on the front screen?
Those kinds of actionable outcomes are really only possible because we've developed the full stack platform in room end points, and edge compute, and then cloud that helps drive some of this experience.
Craig Durr: Well, that's a great segue because now we're talking about what the end users see up front. But there's a lot of network administration that takes place. So in your network operating center, what's taking place back there?
Chris Jaynes: In the network operation center, we're showing Reflect. Reflect is our cloud platform for analytics and insights. But also below that, of course, management, configuration and deployment, and monitoring. So those are things that have to happen. But we've hinted at it earlier, the amount of data that you can collect from that site is really, really valuable for the end users that are monitoring facilities, real estate–How effective are my spaces? How engaging are my spaces? So that's the roadmap we’re on–it’s to understand that data more and present it back to you as a user so that you can gain your own insights about.
Craig Durr: That's pretty powerful. Well, let's go ahead and wrap this up. I want to hear more about what you're calling spaces in between. It sounds pretty exciting and intriguing. You want to kind of allude to what's going on here.
Jason Moss: Yeah. Well, when you go into a building, you concentrate a lot on the meeting rooms and that experience, and these high impact spaces that are being presented. But there's so many other spaces that people are spending their time at throughout the day. And that's what we call the spaces in between–the little lounge area, or where you're going to get coffee, or hearing some different background music throughout the space. And it really creates the ambiance around what's going on for you in this space.
And so we have some fun little things–I don't want to spoil it. We really want people to come see the tour. But there's different ways that we're interacting and showcasing these things. And so when you get the full stack platform, like Chris is talking about, the cool thing is that you're ending up this tour, you realizing–this is all running on one thing.
Craig Durr: It's all related.
Jason Moss: Yeah. And so we talked a lot about the future of data and AI and all these places we can go. But from a very practical standpoint, we just did this really cool project with one of our customers where they were just designing this whole new, huge building in their headquarters. A massive space, and I believe we're in over 70 spaces in there, like throughout it. This is just not meeting rooms, but it's all of the spaces in between the high impact spaces. And what we were able to do is take seven subsystems and consolidate it down into one system, which is our platform. And that eliminated 1,500 points of failure throughout the system and enabled it to be managed and monitored through the Reflect system Chris was talking about.
So while we're building for the future, and we're very excited about the future, what we're delivering today is still pretty amazing.
Craig Durr: This is a really amazing story. Let's go ahead and help recap this. What you've done with this acquisition and with Acuity being part of this now full AV stack of solutions, everything from what takes place within the facilities up to the experiences itself. You've got some great things to show here. I'm really excited about seeing VisionSuite, and this idea of what you're talking about with spaces in between is really intriguing to me. It just can't escape my mind. What are you talking about there?
Jason Moss: Well, come down to the booth. Yes, you'll see it. But I can't give away too much. But yes, you'll definitely want to try and escape.
Craig Durr: We'll tell you what. For our viewers, what are the next things you'd like them to do? Where can they learn more?
Jason Moss: Yeah, please come to the booth. Come see us here. If you are not at ISE, there is qsys.com/ise where we do have a virtual tour. That is a great place to see what we're doing. But if you really want to see it in person, and maybe you're in North America and not able to make it here in Europe, in Orlando in June we’ll again be doing an experience tour. We'd love to see you come.
Craig Durr: Fantastic. Well, Jason, Chris, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Everyone, this is Craig Durr from the Collab Collective. We're Direct from the Expo at ISE 2025. Stay tuned. We're gonna bring you some more exciting interviews. We'll talk to you later. Thank you.