Black Box Moves into Enterprise Signage
Black Box Corp., which makes voice communications, data infrastructure, and networking products, announced its new iCompel Enterprise Digital Signage (EDS) platform.
Black Box iCompel EDS
Black Box Corp., which makes voice communications, data infrastructure, and networking products, announced its new iCompel Enterprise Digital Signage (EDS) platform. The company said that with iCompel EDS, it was entering the large-scale enterprise signage market. The new platform builds on Black Box’s iCompel product, an all-inclusive, integrated hardware and software signage solution for small to medium organizations.
“iCompel EDS allows us to extend our digital signage offering far beyond the small- to medium-sized applications where deployments typically run in the hundreds of media players to be managed,” said Steve Acquista, director of digital signage for Black Box, in a statement. “With EDS, we can now accommodate digital signage solution requirements where thousands of players need to be easily managed.”
The iCompel EDS Subscribers (EDS-SS10) are small-form-factor, Windows 7 Embedded players that are fed content by with the system’s iCompel EDS Manager. The manager is available in a preconfigured rack-mount appliance running Windows 7 Professional (EDS-MM30) and as a VMware server application (EDS-M).
The VMware software can be loaded on an existing server or used as a virtualized server in a cloud computing environment. The centrally hosted server application fits into any data center architecture, according to the company, can be used to manage an unlimited number of remote subscribers, and offers granular content control. Deployed in a hosted enterprise server environment, players located anywhere in the world and within any time zone can be synchronized and managed from a single Web browser, Black Box officials said.
The EDS platform also includes playlist development and management tools, as well as editing features. Its graphical interface offers drag-and-drop control and can be accessed and managed from Internet Explorer 7 or 8 or Firefox 3.x or 4.x. Users can update content from anywhere to change presentations, customize messaging, and issue alerts. iComplel EDS is designed to work with third-party content providers and advertisers, Acquista said.
Black Box said iCompel EDS is designed for retail and advertising applications, as well as corporate communications, hotel and quick-service restaurant chains, K–12, university, transit, government agency, and healthcare applications.
