A meeting room can have excellent equipment and still be hard to use. Luke McSorley, Head of Product at DisplayNote, explores why the software layer now decides the experience and how to make the whole room behave as one system.
For years, the quality of a meeting room was judged largely by the hardware inside it. Better displays, sharper cameras, more capable microphones and more powerful processors were seen as the route to a better experience.
Those components still matter, but they no longer determine the outcome on their own. A room can contain excellent equipment and still feel difficult to use if the software that connects those elements is inconsistent, fragmented or poorly integrated.
This is especially visible in hybrid workplaces. A modern meeting room does not simply need to display a presentation or amplify a voice. It needs to connect in-room participants with remote colleagues, launch the right collaboration platform, share content, manage identity, coordinate multiple devices and allow IT teams to support the environment without being physically present.
That is a much more complex operating model than traditional AV.
The result is a shift in where the meeting-room experience is really created. Hardware still defines what the room is capable of, but software increasingly determines whether those capabilities are accessible, consistent and easy to use.
Hardware used to define the room. Software increasingly defines the experience
Traditional meeting-room design was heavily influenced by the physical specification of the space. Display size, camera quality, microphone coverage and connectivity were central considerations, and for good reason. Poor audio or inadequate video can still undermine a meeting regardless of how sophisticated the software around it may be.
What has changed is the number of digital layers that now sit between the hardware and the user.
A modern room may include a conferencing platform, an operating system, a room PC or embedded device, wireless sharing software, application controls, calendar integration, identity services and remote management tools. Each of those layers contributes to what the user actually experiences.
The difference becomes obvious when two rooms with similar physical equipment behave very differently. In one, the user walks in, sees the scheduled meeting, joins it immediately and shares content without needing help. In another, the same task involves finding the right application, switching inputs, signing into a browser or calling IT.
The hardware specification may be comparable. The experience is not.
That is why software has become central to meeting-room design. It is the layer that coordinates capability and turns a collection of devices into something that feels like a single environment.
Hardware determines what the room can do. Software increasingly determines whether people can actually do it.
Hybrid work exposed the limits of hardware-only thinking
Hybrid work accelerated this shift because it changed the job the meeting room had to perform.
The traditional room was designed primarily for people who were physically present. The remote participant was often an add-on, joining through a conference phone or video system that existed alongside the main meeting.
Today, the room has to support a much more balanced model. In-room and remote participants are expected to see, hear and interact with each other with minimal friction. Content may need to be shared simultaneously. Digital whiteboards and collaborative documents may need to be visible to everyone. Participants may join from different platforms and devices.
This is not a problem that can be solved simply by installing a better camera.
The room has to coordinate audio, video, content, user identity, application access and network connectivity. It has to decide which platform is active, how the meeting is launched and how the user moves between the room and their own device.
In other words, hybrid collaboration has turned the meeting room from an AV environment into a digital workflow.
The physical equipment remains essential, but the software increasingly determines how those elements are combined into a usable experience.
This also changes how IT teams need to evaluate room performance. A technically capable system may still be a poor collaboration environment if users struggle to understand how to operate it. In hybrid work, the quality of the room is measured not only by technical specifications but by how reliably it connects people.
The room now has to work across multiple platforms
Another reason software has become more important is that modern organisations rarely operate in a single collaboration ecosystem.
An organisation may standardise internally on Microsoft Teams while customers prefer Zoom. A partner may send a Google Meet invitation. An acquired office may still use another platform. Guests may want to present from their own devices, while different teams may have their own preferred workflows.
The problem is not simply whether the room can technically support these platforms. The larger challenge is whether the experience remains understandable when the platform changes.
A room that works perfectly for one type of meeting but becomes confusing when a different service appears creates an inconsistency that users notice immediately. The same hardware suddenly behaves differently because the software workflow has changed.
This is where the experience layer becomes important.
The more platforms an organisation supports, the more valuable it becomes to hide some of that underlying complexity from the user. The room should not require people to understand the architecture each time they join a call.
That does not mean every platform can or should behave identically. Different services have different capabilities and requirements. The objective is to make those differences manageable rather than allowing them to dominate the experience.
For IT teams, the challenge is therefore less about eliminating platform diversity and more about creating a consistent interaction model around it. If users have to relearn the room every time the meeting platform changes, the technology stack is exposing too much of its complexity.
Software is becoming the orchestration layer
A useful way to understand the modern meeting room is to think in layers.
Hardware: capture, display and compute
Collaboration platform: connect people, video, audio and content
Experience software: coordinate the user interaction across the room
Management software: give IT visibility, configuration and control
The physical devices remain important, but increasingly they are part of a larger software-defined environment. The software layer connects the calendar to the conferencing platform, the room PC to the display, the user's device to the presentation system and the local room to the wider IT estate.
That orchestration is what turns individual technologies into a coherent experience.
Without it, users are exposed to the underlying complexity. They may need to know which input to choose, which application to launch, which platform is supported and how to connect their device.
With effective orchestration, those decisions become simpler or disappear altogether. This is why software increasingly determines whether the room feels like one system or a collection of separate technologies.
The distinction is subtle but important. The best meeting-room experience is not necessarily the one with the most advanced equipment. It is the one where the equipment works together so predictably that the user does not need to think about how it is connected.
For a fuller explanation of the different software categories involved, see What Is Meeting Room Software? A Guide for Modern IT Teams.
The meeting room experience is increasingly defined by how well the software coordinates the technology around it. Great hardware still matters, but users judge the room by whether everything works together without forcing them to understand the complexity underneath.
Ed Morgan, CEO, DisplayNote
AI makes the software layer even more important
Artificial intelligence provides a clear example of how value is moving above the hardware layer.
A camera still depends on lenses and sensors, but software increasingly determines how that camera behaves. Intelligent framing can identify participants, track speakers and adjust the view automatically. Audio systems can use software to suppress noise or prioritise voices. Conferencing platforms can generate transcripts, summaries and action points.
The physical components remain essential, but the intelligence sits in the software.
This matters because it changes what organisations are really buying when they invest in modern room technology. A camera is no longer judged only by resolution or field of view; it may also be judged by the quality of its framing logic. A microphone is not simply a capture device; its software determines how well it handles noise, overlapping voices and different acoustic conditions.
The same principle applies to meeting platforms. Features such as transcription, translation and automated summaries are software capabilities layered onto the meeting environment.
The important point is not that AI will become another feature race. It is that the user experience is increasingly shaped by how intelligently software interprets what is happening in the room.
This means the design question changes. Instead of asking only, “What hardware capability do we need?”, IT teams also need to ask, “What behaviour do we want the software to create?”
One-touch join is a software achievement
One of the clearest examples of software simplifying the room is the one-touch join.
To the user, it appears simple. The meeting is visible on the screen, they select it and the room joins.
Behind that interaction sits a chain of software dependencies. The calendar needs to recognise the booking. The room needs to have an identity. The collaboration platform must be available. Authentication has to work. The device needs to be online and in the expected state. The correct application has to launch.
The simplicity at the front of the experience exists because the complexity has been managed behind it.
This is an important principle for modern meeting-room design. A better user experience is not necessarily created by reducing the sophistication of the technology; it is often created by making that sophistication invisible.
The best software does not ask the user to understand every dependency. It absorbs those dependencies and presents a simpler interaction. That is why software design now matters so much to the perceived quality of the room. Users do not judge the integration architecture. They judge whether the meeting started.
The software challenge does not end when the meeting starts
The software layer also shapes what happens behind the scenes after deployment.
IT teams increasingly need to monitor room health, manage software versions, push updates, restore configurations and identify faults remotely. As estates grow, those capabilities become part of the operational experience of the meeting room.
This is important because the user-facing experience and the IT operating model are closely connected.
A room that is easy to use but difficult to maintain will eventually become inconsistent. A system that requires local intervention for every configuration change or software issue may work well in a pilot but become difficult to support across dozens or hundreds of rooms.
The software layer therefore has two audiences.
For the user, it should simplify the room.
For IT, it should make the estate more visible, manageable and predictable.
Those two outcomes are linked. Central management helps maintain the consistency that users experience at the front end, while remote monitoring can help identify issues before they become visible during a meeting.
For a deeper look at the operational implications, see How to Manage Meeting Room Technology Across Multiple Offices: An IT Leader’s Guide.
Security is now part of the room experience
As meeting rooms become more software-defined, security also moves closer to the user experience.
Shared spaces are unusual because the device remains in the room while the user changes. The same system may be used by employees, guests, suppliers and customers throughout the day, with each session potentially involving applications, accounts, browser activity and network access.
Software increasingly determines how that temporary relationship is handled.
It can influence authentication, application access, session behaviour, permissions and what happens when the meeting ends. It may also determine whether users can access settings or make changes to the underlying environment.
The important point is that security should not feel like an additional layer of complexity.
A well-designed shared space should protect identities and sessions without forcing the user to understand the security model behind them. The more of that control can be handled through policy and platform design, the less likely it is that security becomes another source of friction.
This reinforces the wider argument: software is not simply adding functionality to the room. It is increasingly defining how the room behaves.
Consistency matters more than feature depth
Meeting-room technology is often evaluated room by room. One space may have an advanced camera, another may include more sophisticated control, while a third supports a different collaboration platform.
That approach can create technically impressive individual rooms but a weak overall experience.
Users do not judge the meeting-room estate by the specification of its best space. They judge it by what happens when they walk into the next one.
If the same task requires a different process in every location, the environment feels unreliable. A user who knows how to start a meeting in one room may still need help in another. Application availability may differ. Interfaces may change. Wireless sharing may work one way in one office and another way somewhere else.
This is why consistency becomes more valuable as the estate grows.
The aim is not necessarily to make every room physically identical. Different spaces can have different sizes, layouts and hardware. What matters is reducing unnecessary variation in the way people interact with them.
Software is increasingly the layer that makes this possible.
It can create common workflows across different hardware generations, present approved applications in a consistent way and help IT maintain a standard operating state.
The most technically advanced room in the estate does little to improve the overall experience if the room next door behaves completely differently.
Consistency is becoming more important than feature depth. An organisation gains little from having one exceptional room if the next space behaves differently, uses another workflow or creates a completely different support model for IT.
Ed Morgan, CEO, DisplayNote
What should IT leaders prioritise in the software layer?
If the room experience is increasingly software-defined, then software selection needs to be evaluated as part of the architecture rather than as a secondary addition to the hardware specification.
Several criteria are particularly important.
Interoperability: The software should reflect the platforms and devices people actually use. If the organisation regularly collaborates with external partners, the room should not become difficult simply because the meeting invitation comes from another ecosystem.
Consistency: Users should encounter familiar workflows across different rooms and locations. That does not require identical hardware, but it does require a coherent experience layer.
Simplicity: The software should reduce the number of technical decisions the user needs to make. The underlying architecture may be complex, but the interface should not expose more of that complexity than necessary.
Manageability: IT teams need enough visibility and control to maintain the environment over time. A good room experience depends on the ability to keep the estate consistent after deployment, not just on the quality of the initial installation.
Security: Identity, session state, applications and permissions need to be governed appropriately for a shared environment. Security should be embedded into the operating model rather than bolted on as a separate workflow.
Flexibility: The software layer should allow the estate to evolve without forcing unnecessary hardware replacement or locking the organisation into a model that no longer reflects how people collaborate.
Taken together, these priorities shift the conversation away from software as a feature set and towards software as part of the room architecture.
The future meeting room is a software-defined experience
Hardware will continue to matter. Poor microphones, weak cameras and inadequate displays can still undermine collaboration, and there is no software layer capable of compensating completely for badly specified equipment.
But the quality of the meeting-room experience increasingly sits above the hardware.
Software determines how the room starts, how platforms connect, how content is shared, how applications are presented, how security behaves and how IT manages the environment after deployment. It is the layer that turns physical capability into an operational experience.
That is why the meeting-room conversation is changing.
The question is no longer simply which devices belong in the room. It is how those devices, platforms and services are orchestrated so that the experience remains consistent as the technology underneath evolves.
The meeting room is not becoming less physical. It is becoming more dependent on the software that makes the physical technology behave like one coherent system.