As Asia Pacific accelerates its shift toward IP-based AV infrastructure, one challenge continues to surface across enterprise, education, government and live production sectors: a widening skills gap in AV-over-IP networking.
In response, NETGEAR has expanded its NETGEAR Academy into what it describes as the industry’s most comprehensive and accessible source of AV-over-IP professional education. The platform now hosts free training content from twelve leading AV and broadcast technology manufacturers, bringing collaborative learning to the forefront of industry development.
Unlike traditional manufacturer-led programs that focus solely on proprietary ecosystems, NETGEAR Academy is built around a unified, vendor-agnostic model. Training from NETGEAR sits alongside courses from industry partners, enabling integrators, IT teams and managed service providers to develop complementary knowledge across the entire AV-IT stack. Learners can access modules covering networking fundamentals, AV-over-IP protocols, configuration, troubleshooting and real-world deployment strategies, all within a single environment.
This approach reflects a broader industry reality. As organisations migrate toward IP-based systems, the boundaries between AV and IT continue to blur. Professionals are increasingly required to understand not just individual products, but how diverse technologies interoperate in complex, multi-vendor deployments.
The Academy’s third-party manufacturer programme now includes courses from:
- Allen & Heath
- AVB Academy
- Crestron
- Audinate (Dante)
- Lightware
- MuxLab
- NDI
- Powersoft
- PTZOptics
- Q-SYS
- SDVoE Alliance
- Sennheiser
By consolidating these brands on one open-access platform, NETGEAR is addressing a longstanding fragmentation in AV education. The goal is not to steer learners toward a single ecosystem, but to provide a holistic understanding of how modern AV-over-IP systems are designed, deployed and managed in practice.
The platform also carries accreditation from AVIXA, enabling learners to earn Renewal Units toward CTS and ANP certifications. This adds a formal professional development pathway to what is otherwise a free, on-demand resource.
“Asia Pacific is one of the fastest-growing markets for AV-over-IP, and the demand for skilled professionals is outpacing supply,” said Gus Marcondes, Global Training Manager at NETGEAR Enterprise. “NETGEAR Academy was built on the belief that the AV industry thrives when knowledge is shared across the entire ecosystem. By offering free training on the full AV over IP ecosystem, including a growing roster of third-party manufacturers, we’re giving integrators, IT teams, and broadcast engineers in APAC the end-to-end education they need to deploy and manage modern AV systems with confidence.”
All training is available at no cost and accessible on demand, removing financial and geographic barriers for practitioners across the region. To access the free training, visit academy.netgear.com. For information and partnership enquiries, contact academy@netgear.com
As AV and IT convergence deepens, the success of future deployments may depend less on product innovation alone and more on the industry’s ability to cultivate shared knowledge. With its expanded Academy model, NETGEAR is positioning collaboration, not competition, as the foundation for closing the skills gap.
