NETGEAR Enterprise expands Professional Services to ecosystem partners, starting with NDI

NETGEAR Enterprise is expanding its Professional Services program beyond network design and deployment to include AV-over-IP workflows, starting with NDI. Through this partnership, NETGEAR can now offer NDI workflow services through its existing channel, helping AV integrators plan, deploy, and optimize systems with network and production-layer expertise from a single provider.

As AV-over-IP deployments grow from small meeting rooms and studios to larger campus-wide systems, troubleshooting can become more complex when network and workflow issues overlap. By bringing network and NDI workflow services together, NETGEAR aims to simplify project delivery, improve system reliability, and help integrators manage increasingly complex AV environments. The company also plans to expand the program to additional ecosystem partners over time.

NETGEAR, Inc. today announced that it has extended its Professional Services program beyond the network layer to cover the AV-over-IP workflows. NDI is the first ecosystem partner in the expanded program.

Until now, NETGEAR Enterprise’s Professional Services have covered the network itself, from design and deployment through to optimization. The agreement with NDI extends that scope to the AV-over-IP workflow. NETGEAR switches have been NDI-certified for years, with dedicated pre-configured profiles for NDI, but the services wrapped around them stopped at the network layer.

Under the new agreement, NETGEAR can scope and sell NDI workflow services through the same two-tier channel that partners already use. The work is delivered as project-based Professional Services, tailored to each engagement, and is separate from the NETGEAR Premium Support tiers. For customers, it means that both the network and workflow design come from a single provider (or source).

This addresses a familiar challenge in AV-over-IP: deployments often start small and scale quickly, growing from a handful of channels in a meeting room or studio to dozens or hundreds of endpoints across a campus. As complexity increases, problems often emerge with the cause not necessarily sitting neatly within either the workflow or the network. It can therefore lie in how the two interact, making responsibility difficult to determine when something goes wrong.

“We launched Professional Services at the network layer, and this partnership with NDI extends that same program to what runs on top of the network,” said Massimo Mazzeo, VP, Global Systems Engineering, Customer Support and Services at NETGEAR Enterprise. “For our customers, the scope now covers the NDI workflow as well, so the expertise for the network and the expertise for the production layer come from the same place.”

NDI: the program’s first partner

NDI is the longest-standing AV-over-IP relationship NETGEAR has, and the expanded services agreement builds on a track record that predates it:

• NDI was the first AV-over-IP protocol supported by a NETGEAR Pro AV profile, making it the first Pro AV deployment challenge the company solved with software.
• NETGEAR Pro AV switches are certified through the NDI program, validated in NDI’s own test facilities.
• NDI was among the first third-party partners to make their training available on NETGEAR Academy, giving integrators a single place to learn both the network and the protocol.
• NETGEAR holds a seat on the NDI Technical Advisory Board.

“NDI’s growth in Pro AV has brought in a different kind of customer, one who depends on their integrator to design the system rather than building it themselves,” said Charles Dobson, Director of Business Development at NDI. “Making our expertise available through NETGEAR’s channel puts it where those projects are actually specified.”

The services program is designed to accommodate additional ecosystem partners over time. NETGEAR remains protocol-neutral in its Pro AV portfolio and continues to work with the full range of AV-over-IP technologies that its switches support. NDI is the first partner in the program, with additional partners expected to follow.