Key Takeaways
- Kramer acquires Ashton Bentley to enhance its Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) offerings and improve hybrid meeting experiences.
- The acquisition enables Kramer to provide fully integrated “out of the box” meeting room solutions, reducing setup time and costs.
- The combined expertise of both companies aims to elevate AV solution standards and deliver greater value to customers globally.
- This strategic move aligns with Kramer’s three-year strategy to strengthen its position in the AV and UCC market.
Topic Summary
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Kramer, a leading audio-visual experiences company, has acquired Ashton Bentley, a UK-based provider of collaboration spaces. This acquisition is part of Kramer’s three-year strategy to enhance its capabilities in the Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) domain. The move allows Kramer to offer comprehensive, end-to-end audio-visual solutions for hybrid conferencing, including meeting room furniture, display mounts, and high-quality AV technology products.
Ashton Bentley’s solutions are designed for simplicity, efficiency, and scalability, reducing installation time and costs significantly. The company’s expertise in creating user-friendly and easy-to-install AV solutions stems from their leadership’s deep integration knowledge and firsthand experience. This acquisition will enable Kramer to provide fully integrated “out of the box” meeting room solutions, ensuring consistent, high-quality hybrid meeting spaces globally.
The combined strengths of Ashton Bentley and Kramer aim to enhance customer experience and extend their reach to companies worldwide. Gilad Yron, CEO of Kramer, expressed enthusiasm about the acquisition, highlighting the cultural fit and the unique, fully integrated solution it brings to the hybrid meeting experience. The founders of Ashton Bentley also shared their excitement about the opportunity to bring their innovative solutions to a broader audience through Kramer’s global market reach.
Kramer, headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, is known for creating engaging, inclusive, and connected audio-visual experiences. Their solutions range from AVSM to advanced cloud-based communication, collaboration, and control systems. The company’s focus is on designing intuitive, seamless technology that bridges gaps and fosters human connection in an increasingly hybrid world.
Ashton Bentley specializes in designing and manufacturing a unique range of Audio-Visual ‘building blocks’ that can be used independently by systems integrators or combined to provide complete out-of-the-box meeting room systems. Their products work with all VC hardware and collaboration platforms such as Teams, Zoom, and Webex, offering simple deployment and reduced total cost of ownership for global enterprises.
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Thoughts and Commentary
Some acquisitions are obvious. A tech manufacturer buys another tech manufacturer. An AV integrator buys another AV integrator. A UCaaS provider buys another UCaaS provider. These acquisitions offer the acquirer access to technology, skilled experts, and (ideally) a customer base.
But some acquisitions are more of a head scratcher. That’s the case here.
First, 90 seconds of background. Kramer is an AV manufacturer with an extensive portfolio of products ranging from video switchers and matrices to audio amplifiers and DSPs to signal converters and extenders to AV control systems and software.
Ashton Bentley (AB) is (or perhaps was) a solution provider offering complete AV room systems, including all required AV technology, furniture, mounting, and more. Stated differently, Ashton Bentley has productized AV integration int a set of “out of the box” meeting room systems that are easy to buy, quick to install, and easy to scale.
So … where’s the common ground? Kramer is NOT an integrator. AB is NOT really an AV manufacturer, although they have designed furniture, mounts, and other pieces of kit needed to complete their turnkey meeting room offerings.
Given the above, why did Kramer acquire Ashton Bentley?
Sure. There’s some potential financial upside to putting Kramer’s sales force and channel behind AB’s products. That’s the low hanging fruit.
But the bigger picture is that AB is closer to the customer and closer to the UCC market, albeit at smaller scale than Kramer.
- Kramer offers products used in AV meeting room systems. AB offers turnkey AV meeting room systems.
- Kramer’s products can be used with UC platforms like Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet. AB offers solutions that include and work seamlessly with these UC platforms.
For those sitting in the bleachers, these may seem like trivial differences. And perhaps that’s even true. But the AV market is crowded and competitive, so every edge matters.
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room … the AV channel partners (a.k.a. integrators, dealers, resellers, etc.). These exceptional folks make their money by purchasing AV technology from companies like Kramer and using those products within systems that THEY (meaning the integrator) designs, builds, and installs.
With the AB products, the design and much of the build work is already done, leaving the integrators with less value to add. This is akin to the expensive, turnkey telepresence systems that were all abuzz just a few years ago. But there’s a key difference here.
Those turnkey telepresence systems were extremely expensive, often costing $100,000 or much more. With such high sticker prices, even a 10 or 20% margin for the integrator was a considerable sum. The AB systems are not cheap, but they’re also not expensive. Think tens of thousands of dollars. Yes – there’s still profit to be made, but likely far less than the profit opportunity on a custom designed AV system.
Personally, I believe there’s room in the market for pre-designed kits (like AB’s) and bespoke AV systems designed from the ground up by skilled AV integrators. But it falls to Kramer to position the AB products properly so Kramer’s channel partners see Kramer as a partner … not a competitor.
I’m a fan of Ashton Bentley. I like their people, their attitude, and their approach to standardizing AV systems. I always have. And I applaud Kramer for its ongoing efforts to strengthen its position in the AV market. But this is not just a tech pick-up. This is a business model pick-up that could disrupt the channel-centric go-to-market approach that has made Kramer what is is today.
The real question is where will the Ashton Bentley products be in six months? On Kramer’s home page highlighted as a “new approach” to AV? Buried in the back available only through search? Only time will tell.