The UK school summer holidays have begun, which in our industry usually signals that the quiet countdown to IBC is underway (four weeks to go but who’s counting?). As IBC in Amsterdam gets closer, I think it’s worth being more precise about what the growing overlap between broadcast and enterprise media really means. 

Organizations are investing more heavily in video because it has become part of how they operate. A CEO’s address can shape how employees respond to a change in direction. An earnings call can affect investor confidence. Those productions may not sit within a television schedule, but they face the kind of scrutiny broadcasters have dealt with for decades.

People spend their lives surrounded by high quality video. The same device streams live sports, creator content, and a company town hall, and audiences don’t lower their expectations simply because the content comes from an enterprise rather than a broadcaster. If it looks poor, sounds bad, or feels awkward, people switch off or go elsewhere. Poor production can also damage an organization’s credibility, making it appear careless or unprofessional. 

In this context, aspiring to ‘broadcast quality’ is much more than a conversation about resolution. It’s about confidence: that everything will look and sound right, the workflow has been properly planned and the operator isn’t relying on luck when the stream goes live.

“The last 20 percent” does most of the work

One of the things we’ve learned as we’ve expanded further into enterprise is that the core platform doesn’t need to be reinvented for every use case. The same production engine can support a broadcaster or a global enterprise, so the challenge is adapting it to the way each organization works. 

On one of the InfoComm panels I joined this year, I described this as “the last 20 percent.” The core platform provides the processing power and operational resilience but the remaining work is understanding how that organization actually operates. A workplace technology team has different priorities from a broadcast engineer, just as a house of worship run by volunteers has different needs from a venue delivering major live events. The underlying platform can be very similar, but the experience around it has to reflect those differences.

Software gives us much more freedom to build powerful technology underneath while simplifying what people use day to day. That doesn’t make engineering less important. If anything, it becomes more important because people stop noticing it. That flexibility also has to fit comfortably within the organization’s IT environment. Security reviews will come, infrastructure teams will ask detailed questions (and they should), and broadcast vendors moving into enterprise environments need to understand those requirements early and design for them from the start. The standards may be different from those in a broadcast facility, but expectations around resilience remain the same.

That principle extends to industry standards as well. I’m genuinely interested in where IPMX is heading because I think it has enormous potential. But adopting a standard simply because it exists isn’t a strategy! The starting point should always be the outcome you’re trying to achieve and the people who’ll use the system. Everything else follows from there.

Value is measured differently

When the conversation turns to ROI, the measures change too. In broadcast, we’re used to talking about audience figures and commercial returns. But enterprise is very different, as value lies in what the communication achieves, and that isn’t always something you can capture on a dashboard.

An executive broadcast might help a new leadership team build credibility across a global organization, while a better production workflow might allow a communications team to respond more quickly when circumstances change. Elsewhere, success might simply mean that a team can run an important event without needing outside support every time. Ultimately, the value of the technology depends on what the organization is trying to achieve. We need to understand what success looks like in each environment before deciding what belongs in the workflow. 

That’s probably the biggest change I’ve noticed in recent years. We still spend plenty of time talking about cameras and standards, and we’ll continue to do so. But the more interesting conversations start somewhere else: with the organization, what it’s trying to achieve, and the people who will use the system long after the installation team has gone home.

A purpose-built production platform combining Grass Valley hardware with software-defined production tools, enabling businesses to adapt and scale without replacing infrastructure

MONTREAL, CANADA, June 17, 2026 – Grass Valley, a leading provider in live production solutions, today introduced AMPP Edge Live, a purpose-built production system designed to bring professional production capabilities to enterprise teams without the complexity of traditional multi-vendor environments. Grass Valley is unveiling AMPP Edge Live at InfoComm 2026 in Las Vegas, June 17 to 19 (North Hall: N7369-MR).

Enterprise teams across education, government, corporate communications, houses of worship, live events and media production are under increasing pressure to create more video content for their audiences. As production demands grow, many organizations are being asked to do more with limited resources and small technical teams, yet existing production systems often lack the flexibility to support new workflows without significant additional investment.

AMPP Edge Live addresses this challenge by providing a flexible production foundation that grows with organizational needs. Combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration and AMPP OS in a single solution, the platform enables organizations to deploy the capabilities they need, with the freedom to expand, repurpose and scale services as requirements change.

Rather than investing in separate systems for future production needs, organizations can build around a common production platform that evolves through software. New capabilities can be introduced without redesigning the underlying infrastructure, while validated Grass Valley hardware and a unified ownership model deliver the reliability and predictable performance organizations need for mission-critical production workflows.

“Production requirements are constantly evolving as audience expectations shift, creating challenges for enterprise organizations whose production infrastructures were not designed for today’s demands,” said Jonathan Lyth, Product Director for Enterprise Media, Grass Valley. “Businesses need production platforms that combine operational agility with the confidence of reliable performance. AMPP Edge Live delivers both, enabling organizations to adapt and scale production capabilities without adding operational complexity.”

The solution is available in two models that serve different production demands:

• AMPP Edge Live 4000 is ideal for live event production and provides the performance to run solutions such as Event Producer X, which brings production switching, graphics, audio mixing, recording, streaming, monitoring and production control into a single browser-based interface.
• AMPP Edge Live 6000 adds processing performance for more demanding production requirements and supports Sport Producer X, which combines switching, graphics, scoring, timing, data integration and instant replay for sports production.

Across both models, operators can manage workflows that previously required multiple specialist systems and dedicated personnel, all through one production environment.

Beyond flexibility, AMPP Edge Live simplifies lifecycle management through a unified ownership model. Grass Valley designs, validates and supports AMPP Edge Live as a complete solution, managing hardware validation, software compatibility, updates and support through a single point of accountability. This removes much of the integration burden associated with multi-vendor environments while helping ensure organizations remain ready for future production requirements.

AMPP Edge Live is built on a short-depth 4 RU chassis with redundant power and modular AMPP I/O cards, so connectivity can be tailored to each workflow. It includes enterprise-grade security, centralized management and role-based access controls, and forms part of the Grass Valley Media Universe, supporting on-premise, hybrid and cloud-connected workflows. The result is a production environment that allows organizations to focus on content creation rather than infrastructure management, without compromising flexibility, reliability or performance.

AMPP Edge Live is available now in the L4000 and L6000 appliance models, with SDI 8 and SDI 12 AMPP I/O card options and media storage choices of 2 TB or 4 TB.

Note to editors

Grass Valley will showcase AMPP Edge Live at InfoComm 2026 (North Hall, N7369-MR, June 17–19). Visitors can also see Grass Valley technology in action at The Pitch (Booth N8063), an immersive live production showcase. To arrange a meeting with a Grass Valley spokesperson, please contact grassvalley@platformcomms.com

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About Grass Valley

Grass Valley empowers over 90% of the world’s top media brands to create and deliver compelling stories that captivate audiences. At the heart of its solutions is the GV Media Universe (GVMU), combining advanced hardware solutions, with the agility, elasticity, and adaptability of the AMPP Media Operating System. Together, they form a seamless, scalable ecosystem for efficient and innovative workflows.

With a portfolio spanning from camera to consumer, Grass Valley provides the flexibility to build solutions for every need, from a single creative harnessing immense production power to globally distributed teams collaborating seamlessly. This breadth of capability enables customers to craft efficient workflows that inspire and engage their audiences.

With over 65 years of expertise, Grass Valley has consistently driven the evolution of live content creation and storytelling. Headquartered in Montreal and supported by Black Dragon Capital, the company remains dedicated to shaping and leading the media revolution.

InfoComm 2026 is the largest professional AV trade show in North America, and for the first time the show has a dedicated Broadcast AV presence in North Hall. If you’re an enterprise AV decision maker evaluating production infrastructure, this is your opportunity to see what’s available, compare approaches, and have direct conversations with the companies building the platforms you’ll depend on.

But trade shows can be overwhelming. Hundreds of exhibitors, thousands of products, and a lot of marketing noise competing for your attention. Knowing what to evaluate, and what questions to ask, makes the difference between a productive visit and an exhausting one.

Here’s what to look for if you’re evaluating broadcast grade production solutions for an enterprise environment.

Ask About Scalability, Not Just Capability

Every vendor on the show floor will demonstrate impressive capabilities. Multi camera switching, real time graphics, streaming output: these are table stakes. The question that matters for an enterprise buyer isn’t what the system can do in a demo. It’s how the system behaves when your requirements change.

Can the platform handle a two-camera internal briefing and a twelve-camera global event using the same operator interface? Can it scale without requiring a different system architecture? Can your team learn one workflow and apply it across every production scenario they encounter?

If the answer involves a different product for a different scale, that’s a red flag. You’re buying complexity, not scalability.

Evaluate Operator Experience, Not Just Feature Sets

The people operating your production system are rarely full-time broadcast engineers. They’re AV technicians, communications specialists, IT adjacent team members, or in some cases volunteers and students. The operator experience needs to match the people who will use it.

At InfoComm, ask vendors to show you what day two looks like. Not the keynote demo, but the Tuesday morning briefing where one person needs to get a clean, professional feed out to four platforms in 15 minutes. That’s the workflow that matters.

Interrogate the Security Model

For any organisation handling sensitive content, whether that’s corporate earnings data, government communications, or student records, the security architecture of the production platform is non-negotiable. Ask vendors specifically: where does the production data sit? What leaves your network? What’s the authentication model? How does the platform integrate with your existing IT security framework?

If the answer is vague, or if the security model requires trusting a third-party cloud with your production data, that’s worth knowing before you invest.

Look for Integration, Not Isolation

A production platform doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It needs to work with your existing AV infrastructure, your network environment, your content management systems, and your distribution channels. The most capable production switcher in the world is a liability if it can’t interoperate with the systems, it sits alongside.

Ask about open standards. Ask about API integration. Ask how the platform handles mixed vendor environments, because every enterprise AV environment is a mixed vendor environment.

Demand a Business Case, Not Just a Technology Case

The best production technology in the world is irrelevant if you can’t build a business case for it. Ask vendors to articulate the operational savings, the risk reduction, the staffing efficiency, and the content value that their platform delivers. If the conversation stays in specifications and features without connecting to business outcomes, it’s not ready for an enterprise procurement process.

Where to Start at InfoComm

Grass Valley’s meeting room is in the North Hall Broadcast AV zone. We’ve structured our InfoComm presence around 15-minute conversations designed to help you evaluate whether broadcast grade production infrastructure fits your operational environment and budget.

No product demo reel. No hard sell. A conversation with someone who’s spent the last 60 years building production systems that hold up under pressure, and who understands that enterprise buyers need business cases, not brochures.

Book your meeting

Walk ins are welcome. But with limited slots, booking ahead guarantees your time.

Nobody plans for their AV infrastructure to become a bottleneck. It happens gradually, one workaround at a time, one “we’ll fix it after the next event” at a time, until the gap between what the organisation needs and what the system can deliver becomes impossible to ignore.

For organisations producing live video at any meaningful scale, the signs are remarkably consistent across verticals. Whether you’re running corporate communications, government media services, university broadcasting, venue production, or esports operations, the friction points tend to look the same.

Here are five indicators that your production environment has outgrown its current foundations.

1. Your biggest events require a completely different setup to your everyday production

If your CEO townhall, annual conference, or flagship event requires an external production crew, a temporary control room, or a fundamentally different technical setup to your daily operations, that’s a scalability problem.

In a broadcast grade production environment, the same platform handles both. The operator interface, the signal routing, the graphics, and the distribution path remain consistent whether the production is a simple two camera internal update or a twelve camera, multi-site, globally streamed event. Scale changes. The system doesn’t.

When your biggest moments require a parallel infrastructure, you’re paying twice: in cost, in complexity, and in risk.

2. Your team’s expertise doesn’t transfer between events or locations

An AV operator who is highly competent in Boardroom A shouldn’t need retraining for Auditorium B. A video engineer who manages signal flow at your headquarters shouldn’t face a completely different architecture at your regional office.

When workflows vary across rooms, sites, or event types, operational consistency disappears. Knowledge becomes personal rather than institutional. And the organisation becomes dependent on specific individuals rather than a reliable system.

Broadcast environments solved this decades ago. Operators work within a consistent production framework regardless of scale or location. That consistency is what allows broadcast teams to deliver thousands of hours of live output per year without the wheels falling off.

3. Post event content repurposing is manual, slow, or non-existent

A CEO’s townhall address contains messages relevant to external comms, investor relations, recruitment marketing, and internal training. A government press conference produces footage needed across multiple departments. A university lecture has value as on demand content for years.

But if extracting that value requires manual downloading, re encoding, and redistribution through disconnected systems, most of it never happens. The live event ends, and the content dies with it.

Production systems designed for professional use treat content management as part of the workflow, not an afterthought. Ingest, cataloguing, clipping, and multi-platform distribution are built into the production chain, so the content your organisation invests in producing continues to deliver value long after the live feed ends.

4. Security and compliance are afterthoughts, not architecture

For corporate enterprises handling market sensitive information, government agencies dealing with classified or sensitive content, and educational institutions subject to accessibility mandates, the security posture of the production environment matters.

Many enterprise AV setups rely on consumer or prosumer grade tools that route content through third party cloud services with limited visibility into data handling. For a departmental meeting, that may be acceptable. For an earnings call, a cabinet briefing, or a broadcast carrying sensitive institutional communications, it often isn’t.

Broadcast AV architectures are designed with data sovereignty in mind. The production data plane stays on your network. The control plane provides modern cloud managed flexibility. Security isn’t a configuration, it’s the architecture.

5. Every live production feels like the first one

This is the clearest sign. If your team approaches each live event with a fresh wave of anxiety, retesting connections, rebuilding configurations, checking that last week’s workaround still holds, the system isn’t supporting them. It’s testing them.

In organisations that have invested in broadcast grade production infrastructure, live events are routine operations. Not because the stakes are lower, but because the system is engineered for exactly this kind of sustained, repeatable, high-pressure use. That’s what broadcast equipment is designed to do. That’s why it exists.

What Comes Next

Recognising these signs is the first step. Addressing them doesn’t require building a broadcast station. It requires rethinking the production model, moving from a collection of AV tools to an integrated production platform that scales with the organisation.

Grass Valley is at InfoComm 2026 in Las Vegas (June 17 to 19) specifically to have these conversations. If any of the five signs above sound familiar, a 15-minute meeting on the show floor could change how you think about what’s possible.

Book a meeting

There was a time when broadcast quality video production belonged exclusively to media companies. The cameras, the switching infrastructure, the signal routing, the production workflows: all of it was designed for organisations whose entire business model was built around putting content on air.

That time is over.

Today, a Fortune 500 company produces more hours of live video content per year than many regional television stations. A government agency’s daily press briefing reaches more viewers than most cable news programmes. A university’s graduation livestream attracts an audience that would be the envy of a mid-market broadcaster.

The scale has changed. The expectations have changed. But in most organisations, the underlying production infrastructure hasn’t kept pace.

The Gap Between Expectation and Infrastructure

The challenge isn’t ambition. Enterprise organisations understand the value of professional live video. Internal communications teams know that a polished CEO townhall builds more trust than a shaky webcam feed. Government agencies recognise that the quality of a public briefing shapes public confidence. Universities see that production grade streaming of campus events strengthens enrolment and alumni engagement.

The challenge is operational. Most enterprise AV environments were designed for conferencing and presentation: a projector, a microphone, a screen share. They weren’t engineered for multi camera live production, real time graphics, multi-platform distribution, and the kind of reliability that means the system works under pressure, not just under ideal conditions.

When these organisations need to step up, for a global all hands, an investor day, a high-profile public hearing, they typically do one of two things. They hire an external production crew at significant cost and with limited repeatability. Or they stretch their existing AV systems beyond what they were designed to do, relying on workarounds, manual processes, and individual expertise to get through the day.

Neither approach scales. Neither builds institutional capability. And both carry risks that become more visible every time a live feed matters.

What “Broadcast AV” Actually Means

The industry has a name for this convergence: Broadcast AV. It’s the term adopted by AVIXA, IABM, and the wider professional AV industry to describe the application of broadcast quality equipment, workflows, and standards in markets outside traditional media and entertainment.

Broadcast AV isn’t about turning a corporate office into a television studio. It’s about bringing the engineering rigour, operational reliability, and production flexibility that broadcast systems are built around into environments where live video has become operationally critical, but the infrastructure hasn’t caught up.

This is the fastest growing segment in professional AV. AVIXA’s IOTA research identifies Broadcast AV as the second largest solution area in ProAV globally, growing at a rate that outpaces most traditional AV categories. The demand is being driven by every vertical: corporate enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions, event venues, and esports organisations are all investing in production infrastructure that goes beyond conferencing.

The Operational Shift

What makes Broadcast AV different from simply buying better cameras or upgrading a video wall isn’t the hardware. It’s the production model.

In a broadcast environment, the production system is designed as an integrated workflow. Cameras, switching, graphics, audio, routing, recording, and distribution all operate within a unified architecture. Operators work within a consistent interface regardless of whether the production is a simple two camera interview or a twelve-camera live event. The system scales without being rebuilt.

That production model, integrated, scalable, operator consistent, is exactly what enterprise organisations need as their live video demands grow beyond what conferencing tools can deliver. The technology exists. The platforms exist. The question for most organisations is whether they recognise that the gap between their expectations and their infrastructure is a solvable problem, not an inevitable compromise.

Where This Is Heading

InfoComm 2026 has added a dedicated Broadcast AV zone in North Hall for the first time: a clear signal from the industry’s largest trade body that this market is no longer emerging. It has arrived.

Grass Valley will be at InfoComm with a focused presence in this space. We’ve spent over sixty years engineering the production systems that the world’s leading broadcasters depend on. Now we’re bringing that same engineering rigour to every organisation where live video production carries real business stakes.

If you’re responsible for production infrastructure in a corporate, government, education, venue, or esports environment, and you’re feeling the gap between what your organisation expects and what your current systems can reliably deliver, this is a conversation worth having.

We’ll be sharing more in the weeks ahead. For now, the question is simple: is your production infrastructure built for where your organisation is going, or for where it was?

What I Learned Sharing a Stage with LinkedIn and Superconnector Studios at NAB

Last week I had the privilege of joining a panel at NAB Show 2026 alongside Dave Pond and Gary Schneider from LinkedIn, Jack Verschleiser from Superconnector Studios, and our moderator Irad Eyal. 

The session explored how enterprises are transforming from corporate video departments into fully operational in house studios. And honestly, I walked away with more than I gave.

That is the point, though. You learn the most when you shut up and listen.

LinkedIn reminded me what “customer led” actually means

LinkedIn News runs a global production operation. They are not a social media team making clips. They are a news organisation, and every technology decision they make reflects that identity. When they talked about centralising production so that their CEO can walk into any office in the world and be live within minutes, all remoted back to a central control room, that is exactly the use case we built AMPP to serve.

But here is what really landed for me. LinkedIn were early adopters. They had AMPP back in 2019. And rather than just validating our technology, they pushed us. They want guidelines. They want a clear roadmap. They want to follow at their own pace while understanding what comes next. 

That is not a customer asking for features. That is a partner telling you how to show up properly. And we need more of that. 

At Grass Valley, we talk a lot about listening to customers but sitting on that stage with LinkedIn reminded me that listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is passive. Listening means doing something with what you have been told.

Superconnector Studios taught me about institutional knowledge

Jack and the Superconnector Studios team work with some of the biggest luxury brands in the world, coaching them to build and maintain production quality in house rather than outsourcing it. Their perspective was fascinating because it challenges a mindset that a lot of technology companies fall into, which is the assumption that better tools solve everything.

They made the case that brands need institutional knowledge. External agencies rarely understand a brand’s production workflow deeply enough. The people producing your content need to understand why it exists, not just how to make it look good. And they need the ability to pivot quickly when strategy changes, which happens all the time.

That resonated with me because it shapes how we should be positioning our solutions. We are doing a lot more than ‘selling a platform’ to organisations because we are also enabling them to build lasting production capabilities. The technology has to support that journey, not complicate it.

Authenticity is the new production value

One theme cut across every panellist: authenticity. The panel was unanimous that audiences can smell inauthenticity in seconds. LinkedIn shared data showing that viewers make a stay or leave decision in roughly five seconds. If it does not feel real, they are gone.

This matters enormously for how we think about broadcast-quality standards in enterprise environments because production values are about making things feel trustworthy. A properly configured workflow means even content shot on a phone can deliver high-quality, ‘expensive-looking’ results at scale. But that kind of authenticity does not happen by accident. It depends on systems that make quality , consistent, and repeatable.

AI came up, naturally and the consensus was clear: AI tooling should support the creative process, not replace the human authenticity audiences are actually responding to. No AI generated voices. No synthetic shortcuts. The future of enterprise video is human, and the technology should keep it that way.

Software defined changes the game, but hardware is not going anywhere

The panel explored what happens when organisations need to adapt quickly, and the answer kept coming back to software defined infrastructure. Traditional hardware refresh cycles, where you are locked into a seven year commitment, simply do not work in a world where platforms, content formats, and audience expectations shift constantly.

But let me be clear about something, because nuance matters here. Software defined does not mean hardware goes away. Hardware absolutely has its place. For many enterprises, reliable, resilient on premises infrastructure is not just preferred, it is required. Security policies, data sovereignty, latency, and operational uptime all demand it. What changes is how you architect around it.

This is something we feel strongly about at Grass Valley. The reality for most organisations standing up in house production is hybrid. Some workloads live on prem. Some live in the cloud. Some move between the two depending on the production, the venue, or the moment. A software defined platform means you can operate across all of those environments without being locked into one model. You can cope with strategy changes without ripping everything out and starting again. Governance, compliance, and editorial sign off all live on one platform regardless of where the infrastructure sits. And your production capability grows with you rather than holding you back.

The point is flexibility, not replacement. The organisations getting this right are the ones building hybrid environments where hardware and software work together, and where the platform adapts to the operation rather than forcing the operation to adapt to the platform.

MXL and the interoperability conversation

We also talked about MXL and the broader push towards interoperability. I appreciated that the panel did not shy away from the harder conversation here. ‘The industry still carries scars from the ST 2110’ hit home, and the consensus was that cycles need to be shorter and more open in character.

What feels different is that MXL is actually ready for what’s next. With version 1.0.0 in production and running live across deployments at NAB Show, interoperability is becoming something customers can actually see and test, rather than plan for. I saw several demos in Vegas, all built on the same framework, from audio systems to venue technologies. 

The strength of MXL lies in reducing the challenges of integration – it’s a standard that makes it materially easier for vendors to work together without pushing complexity onto the customer. And that kind of visible ecosystem progress is what gives interoperability real meaning. 

Our position is clear: we don’t wish to develop everything inside one vendor’s ecosystem. We want to leverage other suppliers and build something open. But we also have a responsibility to guide customers through that journey. The broadcast and AV worlds are converging, and the people navigating that convergence need honest partners, not just product pitches.

What this means for how we show up

Walking off that stage, I kept thinking about one phrase that came up early in the session: start with outcomes. 

Every production workflow decision should begin with why the content is being produced, not which tools to buy. That is the lens I want to bring to every conversation we have with enterprises standing up their own in house production facilities. What are you trying to achieve? Who is your audience? What does success look like? The technology conversation comes after those questions are answered.

Grass Valley’s enterprise solutions are broadcast quality and business ready and delivered on a single platform that scales with you. But our real skill is in partnership. It is in listening to customers like LinkedIn, learning from experts like Superconnector Studios, and showing up as collaborators rather than just vendors.

If you are building or scaling an in house studio, I would love to hear what challenges you are facing. The best ideas on that NAB stage did not come from any single company. They came from the conversation.

Watch Jon’s panel at NAB Show 2026

Jonathan Lyth is Product Director at Grass Valley, leading the company’s Broadcast AV strategy for enterprise markets.

Original Article written for AV Magazine

Walmart’s Sam Walton Hall Event Center combines live events and broadcast operations within a SMPTE ST 2110 IP environment. Standardising on Grass Valley production systems, the facility enables consistent, multilingual communications across a global workforce of more than two million associates. 

When Walmart began developing its new corporate campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, the objective was clear: create a central environment that could support collaboration, communication, and culture at global scale. At the heart of the 350-acre site is the Sam Walton Hall Event Center, a purpose-built venue designed to serve as both a live event space and a broadcast hub for one of the world’s largest workforces. 

Operational since January 2025, Sam Walton Hall supports internal communications for Walmart’s 2.1 million associates worldwide. The facility brings together live production, broadcast, and event operations within a single, connected infrastructure, enabling the company to communicate consistently across offices, regions, and time zones.  

“It’s positioned right in the centre of the campus,” says Dave Magnia, chief engineer, campus events at Walmart. “From any office building, it’s a short walk. The intention was to make company-wide events and broadcasts easy to access, both technically and operationally.” 

Unified production ecosystem 

The Event Center is the result of a five-year development process involving Walmart, APRO Designs, and Grass Valley. Early designs were based on traditional SDI workflows, reflecting Walmart’s long history in internal broadcasting. The company has operated its own television studio since 1988, originally using satellite distribution to communicate directly with stores across the US. 

As the campus project evolved, the team reassessed its technical approach and made the decision to transition the facility to a SMPTE ST 2110 IP-based architecture. While the move was not initially driven by creative requirements, the operational and infrastructure benefits became increasingly clear during the design phase. “When we started running the numbers, the cabling savings alone were significant,” Magnia explains. “Once you get into router sizes at this scale, reducing copper and labour has a real impact. IP also gave us far more flexibility in how we designed and distributed the system.” 

The 130,000-square-foot facility includes a 1,150-seat auditorium, a 900-seat conference centre divisible into six rooms, a broadcast television studio, a radio studio, two auxiliary control rooms, and an outdoor amphitheatre. A core requirement was that every space could be operated independently or combined into larger productions, depending on the event. “Operator consistency was critical,” says Magnia. “We wanted staff to be able to move between control rooms and see the same panels, the same layouts, and the same workflows.” 

Grass Valley K-Frame production switchers were deployed across the control rooms to support this requirement, providing a uniform operational environment regardless of production scale. System orchestration and signal management are handled using Grass Valley Orbit, which enables routing control across video, audio, timecode, and metadata within the IP infrastructure. 

Moving to SMPTE 2110 also allowed Walmart to decentralise its signal processing. Instead of relying on a single central rack room, IP gateways and interfaces enabled I/O to be distributed throughout the building, simplifying expansion and reducing physical constraints. 

Bridging the Worlds of Audio and IT  

Today, the Event Center supports a wide range of internal broadcasts, streamed globally using platforms including Zoom, YouTube, and WorkVivo, Walmart’s internal communications network. Content is delivered in multiple languages, including English, French, Hindi, Mandarin, and Spanish, reflecting the geographic spread of Walmart’s workforce. 

“Being able to manage multilingual audio workflows efficiently was essential,” Magnia says. “With 2110, we can pair different audio tracks and adapt outputs without redesigning the system.” 

Audio integration was one of the more complex aspects of the project. Walmart’s production audio infrastructure is built around Yamaha consoles using Dante, alongside a Q-SYS system for background audio across the campus. Integrating these environments within a 2110 framework required close coordination between broadcast engineering and IT teams. 

Security was another key consideration. As a corporate facility, the system needed to comply with strict IT security policies without compromising broadcast performance. Walmart deployed Cisco Nexus-class switches and worked closely with Cisco and Grass Valley engineers to validate and optimise the network configuration. “Every 2110 deployment is different,” Magnia notes. “There’s no single blueprint. Having partners who understand both broadcast and IP was essential in getting the system operational.” 

Walmart’s long-standing relationship with Grass Valley played a central role in the technology selection. The company has relied on Grass Valley systems for decades across studios, OB environments, and live production facilities. “That familiarity and reliability matter,” says Magnia. “When you’re building something at this scale, you need confidence in both the technology and the support behind it.” 

Looking ahead, Walmart continues to explore further IP integration and more flexible control options, including greater use of third-party interfaces and personalised operator workflows. The Sam Walton Hall Event Center has been designed to accommodate that evolution. “This facility isn’t static,” Magnia concludes. “It’s a platform that allows us to adapt how we communicate as the organisation changes.” 

By combining Grass Valley production systems with a SMPTE 2110 infrastructure, Walmart has established a scalable, resilient broadcast environment that supports inclusive, global communication across its workforce, while maintaining the operational discipline of traditional broadcast engineering. 

Learn more about this Case Study and contact Sales to learn more

Last year, Grass Valley made its ISE Show debut and approached it very deliberately as a listening exercise.  You learn quickly how teams are building within real constraints, as well as the pressures they are working around and what they expect and need from the systems that support them.

12 months later, returning to Barcelona really confirmed how broadcast, AV, enterprise IT and live production are now overlapping and informing the same projects. That overlap was visible in the kinds of environments people described throughout the week. Corporate studios producing weekly output as part of internal operations, government spaces designed for permanent capture, archive and oversight, venue control rooms supporting both in-room and distributed audiences as standard.

Convergence is now expected in the design

As video becomes more embedded, the questions teams bring to the table change. Teams want workflows they can return to without rebuilding from scratch, and they want to know that when expectations change, the system will move at the same pace. Most organizations discover over time that requirements are rarely fixed and what looks sufficient during installation can feel restrictive a year later.

Enterprise environments bring additional layers of responsibility. Governance frameworks are often in place before production technology is introduced, while security review is routine. In finance environments, policy dictates where media can exist and how it can move, while in government settings, continuity and oversight are seen as core expectations. 

Software-defined production has gained attention in that context because it allows a separation in the way the architecture is structured. With AMPP, media processing can remain within the customer’s controlled environment when required, while orchestration and workflow management operate independently. That flexibility provides room to adapt over time and it means teams can reconfigure workflows without dismantling the entire deployment. 

When permanence changes the conversation

Another key observation from the show was the longevity of enterprise installations. They are environments expected to remain operational in the long-term and integrators play a key role because they understand how production fits into the building, the network or the governance model. Their perspective often determines whether a system becomes part of the organization’s standard operating approach.

Whether it’s integration surfaces, APIs, long-term supportability or the ability to connect production into a broader system, they are all part of what determines whether a platform can be standardized over time. These considerations influence long-term viability more than a single product specification. Channel enablement, therefore, is directly tied to product relevance. If partners cannot extend and adapt the platform confidently, then the system’s lifespan shortens.

Developing for real-world lifecycles

Looking at the upcoming roadmap, several themes are emerging. IPMX support is planned for later in 2026, building on the existing ST 2110 foundations. Interoperability continues to shape deployment decisions, particularly in environments where infrastructure must coexist with broader network strategies. Product development is also moving through steady iteration, with feature additions increasingly shaped by customer feedback from deployed environments.

But while 2026 priorities are concentrated in corporate, finance, government, and venue markets, it was interesting to see how other sectors, including esports, education, house of worship and health are already active and likely to become more structured areas of attention. The ambition for enterprise media is straightforward, building a revenue base that can grow and sit alongside broadcast over time, a reflection of just how deeply embedded video has become, especially in organizations that would not have described themselves as media operations even a few years ago.

What ISE reveals about where this is all heading

ISE 2026 reinforced that convergence between broadcast AV and enterprise media is now influencing everything from system design through to integration and procurement. Teams are approaching video as infrastructure, with longevity and adaptability now part of the evaluation criteria from the outset. For Grass Valley, it simply reinforces the direction we are already focused on. We are here to support teams with platforms and partner ecosystems that fit this enterprise reality, where convergence shapes how systems are expected to operate and evolve over time.