Who Needs 10,000 Channels?
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
C-nario yesterday issued a press release entitled “C-NARIO BREAKING BOUNDARIES OF SCALABILITY” – we say it should have read “C-nario breaking boundaries of BELIEVABILITY” with some mighty claims and lots of “Only C-nario tests and certifies …” etc.
It might only be the beginning of the year but it is going to take some doing to have a more pointless and misleading press release than this in 2008 – we can’t believe that some reputable news sources also, took it at face value and re-printed it with no (informed) comment.
Do they mean 10,000 channels or do they mean 10,000 players / screens? If it is the former (and if it is, we think it would only be, because 10,000 screens would be playing separate content) then who on earth would ever need 10,000 channels?
If they define a channel like we think the rest of the industry do then we challenge any creative or content person to manage it, segregate it, plan it and then explain it to a customer!
This is a classic example of technology folks selling something that either isn’t there, isn’t what other people think it is or the industry doesn’t need.
When you think that C-nario are close to doing well with the Outdoor Media Owners why on earth would they issue a press release that will most probably confuse them.
The Outdoor Media Owners want a simple yet powerful piece of software / hardware that can run ‘animated posters’ at certain times of the day or night, allows easy scheduling and logs everything (perhaps this is why TELentice won twice against C-nario in recent tenders).
I doubt if any of the Outdoor Media Owners use 90% of the features in the software systems they have now (things like ‘repel’ and ‘attract’) and would be even more hard pressed to come up with half a dozen channels let alone 10,000!!
The cliche “Keep it simple stupid” springs to mind.
We may well have got the wrong end of the stick with this press release, but if we have then you can bet your bottom dollar that others have too.
C-NARIO BREAKING BOUNDARIES OF SCALABILITY
C-nario leads the way in large-scale networks to scale-up to 10,000 channels per server
TEL AVIV – January 22, 2008 – C-nario, a global leader in digital signage solutions, will showcase its new digital signage scalability tools at the upcoming Integrated Systems Europe 2008, which enables unprecedented scalability of networks to up to 10,000 channels per server.
“As the digital signage industry grows, there is increasing demand especially from advertisers and large corporations to support sophisticated large-scale broadcasting while maintaining the promise to get the right message to the right people at the right time, without jeopardizing security and functionality,” said Rami Bahar VP Sales & Marketing at C-nario. “Only C-nario tests and certifies up to 10,000 channels per server, manages those channels at a single, central location, and enables the successful launch of ground-breaking large-scale installation.”
C-nario has established a proprietary certified testing lab to ensure that their robust management tools can successfully operate large-scale multi-branch installations. By connecting several PCs together, each simulating up to 500 content channels, and connecting this system to the C-nario management system, C-nario verifies that all management features work successfully and efficiently with deployments of up to 10,000 channels per server.
C-nario scalability tools target large-scale digital signage displays in the retail and banking industries. Main features include: C-nario Watchdog, identifying, repairing and reporting problems; C-nario Snapshots, sending snapshots of multiple channels simultaneously for quick and easy monitoring; and C-nario device monitoring & control tools, including Pin Table, organizing feedback in an easy-to-manage format to ensure all screens are working properly, and Panel Designer for creating user-generated control environment.
To date, C-nario has gained worldwide recognition having deployed in 26 countries with top-tier partners and customers including, JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Time Warner Corporation and Philips, and has implemented global signage solutions around the world including at JFK Airport, the O2 Arena (London), CNN, Manpower France, McDonalds (Singapore) and several others.
C-nario will be presenting at ISE 2008, booth #H119
We don’t doubt their testing or certification process but their claims that ONLY they do that is far fetched. You think for example, that Cisco don’t do this? The leading network company in the world – with, what, millions and millions of network nodes out there? EnQii, Broadsign, Scala ?
When you think that C-nario’s JCDecaux installation (in the press relesase above) is one airport in the US and Clear Channel in the UK is probably less than 10 Magink screens, it makes you think even more why you would bother shouting about 10,000 channels.
A mistaken case of mine is bigger than yours we think!
Postscript – as per a previous post on the Art of Writing Press Releases – did you spot the “Global Leader” reference
January 24th, 2008 at 11:40 @528
Couldn’t agree more with you comments. This type of claim does nothing to help us as an industry as it only serves to confuse and baffle our potential customers.