Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome! This week, we are going to begin to look at the basics of audio-visual integrations. Now, if you've been following along, you know that this is Technology Stack #2 of this integration series.

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back! Like the previous two lessons on integration, we're going to spend a bit of time getting to the core basics of selling integration, and then we're going to talk about selling lighting integration. So, like the previous two posts, this one's going to be a little bit longer, but then we're going to continue this moving forward as we go through AV, access control, and other systems, as I see fit, over the next couple of weeks.

Hey folks, Phil Zito here, and welcome back! Today, we are going to be continuing our series on integrations. We are going to be talking about implementing lightning integrations, and we're also going to discuss the three primary integration types and approaches.

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back! Today, we're going to be kind of stepping a little bit out of where we have been in the past, which has been sales, retrofits, and technology. Now we're going to be diving deep, for at least the next nine sessions, into integration.

I get asked a lot lately, "What is an API?"

You'd think this would be something you could Google and be done with, but the problem is, apparently no one has told the folks writing all the API articles that the folks reading the articles don't know what API's actually are!

Well, if that's you, you're in luck! This article assumes zero IT knowledge. I will take you through what an API is in such a way that almost anyone can understand it. 

Have you ever wondered what a communication bus is? When I was starting out, I didn't know what a communication bus was. You've probably heard the term though but maybe you heard it called something else... Comm bus, Comm Trunk, Trunk. MS/TP...

They both stink, grow old and fall apart.

I had the wonderful pleasure of taking about 30 bags of decaying yard waste to the dump. I would say you haven't lived until you've smelled the sweet aura of decaying grass, but that would be a complete lie.

How did things get so bad? When I thought about it I realized I only produce 6 bags of grass per mowing, that means that I went 5 weeks without taking this grass to the compost dump.

So I was talking with a buddy of mine yesterday on Skype. He and I started discussing communication trunks and the best way to troubleshoot them.

There is nothing more frustrating and difficult then troubleshooting communication trunks in existing buildings.

Well, that's an attention grabber eh?

Unless you've been living under a rock the past couple days you've probably heard about the malware that's been plaguing Windows machines.

This new malware called "WannaCry" has been encrypting folks hard drives keeping them from accessing their data.

The reality is, ransomware (malware that locks up files until someone pays the hacker money) is nothing new.

So here we are. 8 weeks ago I started to take you on a journey through the wild and crazy world of systems integration.