Multimedia Grassfish 3 Testen eines Corporate-TVSystems Testing a Corporate-TVSystem
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(e) With their project Corporate TV Content Base Grassfish Marketing Technologies GmbH is opening the booming digital signage market to SMEs.
from a static to a dynamic medium, digital signage, too, is developing into a dynamic medium. Above all it’s regional topicality that shows the utility of this medium. A good example is a material management system that Your company is leading in automatically intensifies the field of digital signage. promotion of those articles What is this innovative form that will soon expire. As to of communication? Digital the design, screens can also signage is a form of marbe used in upright format— keting and communication which makes them look which is used for advertising and information screens. more like a poster than a TV You can find such digital bill- set. It is even possible to boards and screens in shops, integrate the screen into a piece of furniture or a wall, railway stations or airports. On an international level dig- you could put it behind a glass wall thus making it an ital signage has been used architectural object. since the end of the 1980s; and in the past four or five What is Grassfish’s USP? We years it has been applied don’t see digital signage exhere, too. Just think of the clusively from the technical info screens. point of view. What’s above all important for us is how And how does it work technically? Screens—usually flat the medium is used. We also screens—are installed, which provide the content, we devise a concept for compaare controlled via PC. The nies showing them how to majority of the contents— use the medium for their videos, images, animations communication strategy. etc. is produced dynamiWhen dealing with contentcally and made available via oriented projects we coopa content management syserate with Fischer Enterpristem. Just like the Internet es, a cross-media company. that is steadily developing 214
Is digital signage also used for company-internal communication? One of our focuses is on personel information systems where topical company news are communicated via screens installed, e.g. at the coffee corner. Large enterprises like Mayr-Melnhof or Canon are using this internal communication medium. Who are your most important clients right now? We have implemented major projects with: Porsche Austria, Österreichische Lotterien, Mediaprint, Lufthansa, Mayr-Melnhof, Deutsche Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken, Deutsche Sparkassen, Bayer. We are just about to enter the English market with local sales partners. What is the project Corporate TV Content Base all about? So far digital signage has been used for large projects with 50 to several thousands of screens. But there is great demand with SMEs: take for example a hotel that wants to inform its guests about offers, tours etc. Or think of a beauty parlor searching for a flexible medium to advertise its own products and services. With our product Corporate TV Content Base we want to open the digital signage market to SMEs. It is basically a web platform available via the Grassfish server and via which the screens are controlled. We offer a media pool, a sort of modular system from which the clients may select templates (images etc.) which they then fill with their own information. The beauty parlor may for instance present celeb news or bioweather news, which means that there is specific information for a specific target group. We buy content for the platform. In the future the platform will also provide addi-
tional niche information, e.g. special information for the boarder community and other special interest groups. We intend to launch the Corporate TV Content Base project in fall 2008. And what is its market potential in your opinion? That depends on what you offer. It has to be reasonably priced and simple. What’s certain is that indoor and outdoor advertising will considerably change, just like the news industry that has already changed due to the Internet: dynamic data management—that’s the future! With digital signage it’s easier to reach your target groups through advertising independent of the company’s size.
PRO FILE Grassfish entwickelt Software und Content zur dynamischen Steuerung von Informations- und Werbe-Bildschirmen bzw. elektronischen Plakaten „Digital Signage”. Das junge Unternehmen wurde bereits im ersten Geschäftsjahr 2006 österreichischer Marktführer im Bereich Digital Signage und zählt heute zu den Top drei Anbietern im deutschsprachigen Raum. Grassfish develops software and content for the dynamic control of information and advertising screens as well as of electronic posters “digital signage”. Already in its first business year 2006 the company became the Austrian market leader in the field of digital signage and now figures among the top three suppliers in German speaking countries.