News

Black Box opens up new iCOMPEL enterprise-class digital signage solution

May 3, 2011

Black Box Corp., a provider of voice communications, data infrastructure, and networking products, recently announced the launch of its new iCOMPEL enterprise digital signage (EDS) platform.

The new iCOMPEL EDS will be exhibited at InfoComm 2011, June 15–17 in Orlando, Fla. With its introduction, Black Box said, it now enters the large-scale enterprise signage market, building on the success of the award-winning iCOMPEL, an all-inclusive, integrated hardware/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. "With EDS, we can now accommodate digital signage solution requirements where thousands of players need to be easily managed."

The iCOMPEL EDS Subscribers are small-form-factor, Windows 7-embedded players that are easy to provide content to with the system's iCOMPEL EDS Manager. The manager component itself is available in an all-inclusive, preconfigured rack-mount appliance running Windows 7 Professional and as a VMware server application.

The VMware software can be loaded on an existing server or used as a virtualized server in a cloud-computing environment. This centrally-hosted server application fits into any data center architecture, can be used to manage an unlimited number of remote subscribers, and offers granular content control, according to Black Box. 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 point.

Plus, the EDS platform incorporates state-of-the-art playlist development and management tools, and advanced editing features. Its intuitive graphical interface offers easy drag-and-drop control and can be accessed and managed from an Internet Explorer 7 or 8 or Firefox 3.x or 4.x browser. Users can update content from anywhere to change presentations, customize messaging and issue alerts. It is also designed to work seamlessly with third-party content providers and advertisers, Acquista said.