UpTrajectory Review

The piece from CIO Magazine examines how enterprise collaboration technology—once a standalone AV concern—has become deeply entangled with IT infrastructure, unified communications platforms, and security systems. This convergence, the article argues, is overwhelming internal IT teams and forcing organizations to reconsider traditional support models. Karen Klosinski of AVI-SPL, a major AV integration and managed services provider, notes that complexity has increased dramatically, requiring expertise across multiple disciplines while frequent software updates outpace internal capabilities. The article identifies warning signs that IT support needs reinforcement: platform migrations demanding retraining, strategic initiatives starved of resources, and recurring technical issues eroding employee satisfaction. It suggests managed services as a supplement—not necessarily a replacement—for internal teams, particularly as midsize businesses struggle to justify hiring specialized administrators for platforms like Microsoft Teams.

For a small-business operator, this isn't enterprise abstraction—it's a live budget and productivity problem. If your team lives in Teams, Zoom, or Slack, you've likely felt the drag: the conference room camera that fails during a client pitch, the audio echo that derails a sales demo, the security patch you didn't know you needed. The article's core insight applies directly: you don't need to hire a full-time UC engineer, but you do need someone who speaks the language of these integrated systems. A 50-person company can't absorb the cost of a $120,000 collaboration specialist, yet the cost of downtime, botched migrations, and employee frustration often exceeds what a managed service contract would run. The piece correctly frames this as an economic argument, not just a technical one.

What's genuinely useful here is the acknowledgment that outsourcing isn't binary. The article avoids the managed-services sales pitch (despite quoting a vendor) by emphasizing supplementation over replacement. That's a nuance often lost in IT coverage, which tends to polarize into 'DIY or outsource everything.' The warning signs listed—platform migrations, resource diversion, declining employee satisfaction—are practical diagnostic tools. We agree that the convergence of AV, IT, and security has outpaced traditional IT support structures. Where we're skeptical: the article underplays the risks of vendor lock-in and the variability in managed service quality. Not all providers can handle the security layer effectively, and the piece doesn't address how to vet them.

The second-order effects ripple outward. Employees accustomed to seamless consumer tech now judge their employers by collaboration reliability—poor AV experiences feed attrition and client-facing credibility problems. For smaller organizations, the talent gap is widening: the same skills needed to manage Teams or Webex are in demand at enterprises offering higher salaries, making in-house hires even less feasible. There's also a security dimension the piece touches but doesn't develop: collaboration platforms are now attack vectors, and a misconfigured Teams environment can expose more than a bad meeting. The cost of getting this wrong isn't just downtime; it's data leakage and compliance exposure.

Watch for the continued blurring of AV and IT job roles, and expect managed service providers to bundle security monitoring with collaboration support—that's where the market is heading. If you're a small-business operator, audit your collaboration stack now: list every platform, who administers it, and where the gaps are. If your IT person (or fractional IT consultant) is spending more than a few hours a week on AV troubleshooting, it's time to price managed services. Ask providers specifically about their security expertise and migration support, not just break-fix coverage. The goal isn't to outsource your entire IT function—it's to free your team to focus on work that actually grows the business.

“Complexity has increased dramatically in the environments that customers have to manage today” — CIO Magazine

Takeaway: If collaboration tech consumes more than a few hours weekly of your IT person's time, price managed services—supplement, don't replace, and vet for security expertise.