Panduit Corp. today acquired global audio-visual (AV) product and systems manufacturer Atlona. “Atlona designs and develops innovative, award-winning products for a diverse range of commercial and residential AV and IT markets worldwide, including education, business, government, entertainment, and healthcare,” Panduit said when announcing the acquisition. Atlona has been in business for approximately 15 years. The company’s product categories include networked AV, signal distribution, wireless collaboration, and AV system automation. “These solutions enable system designers, integrators, consultants, and installers to simplify installation, minimize maintenance, and maximize the versatility of premier automated control solutions,” Panduit added.
Dennis Renaud, president and chief executive officer of Panduit, commented, “Atlona has been at the forefront in developing cutting-edge AV technology that embraces the full potential of the convergence of AV and network infrastructure. Their industry-leading solutions complement Panduit’s extensive physical infrastructure portfolio, which allow us to offer customers a quality end-to-end solution as they move to increasingly complex network infrastructure systems.”
Atlona’s CEO Ilya Khayn added, “There are strong synergies between our companies including a culture of providing innovative, high-quality, customer-driven products, along with outstanding customer support capabilities. This partnership will ultimately provide our market channels with a single-source solution and expand our footprint globally.”
In an interview with cablinginstall.com, Khayn explained, “Over the years we have developed our pro AV channel. Our message to that channel about this acquisition is, it’s business as usual. That’s one great characteristic of the deal: it doesn’t interfere with what we can gain on the datacom side” of the business. He added that many Atlona customers have been asking for data-communications-infrastructure technology for years. “Whether you’re a pro AV integrator or a datacom integrator, things will stay the same, but you’ll get the added advantage of access to the other product set.”
Tom Kelly, vice president of Panduit’s enterprise business, told cablinginstall.com, “One of the product lines we’re excited about is the AV-over-IP solution, which includes HDBase-T point-to-point extensive devices. Leading end-users in IT are converging AV across the Ethernet network. That’s forcing our installer community to think about AV differently than they have in the past. And it sets up the opportunity for us to educate them.”
Khayn added, “We implement a variety of technologies, depending on market size and user needs. Several of our products have HDBase-T technology, which appeals to small and medium-sized applications. In other, larger-scale environments, AV-over-IP makes a lot of sense.” Atlona provides technology for that full range of applications and user needs.