Google, Advantech webinar explains twin components-software program tactic to digital signage

Components or software program? Participant equipment or SoC/Cloud? Electronic signage and professional AV operators know these long-standing debates properly, but what if the response was some mix of “equally/and?”

Google and Advantech representatives joined Digital Signage These days editor Daniel Brown for a webinar to go over “The fantastic duo: GoogleOS & Advantech’s digital signage gamers revolutionizing the sector,” which include subjects similar to hardware, program and a significant range of audience queries.

Ryan Nieto, digital signage merchandise manager at Advantech, joined to explore Advantech’s digital signage components answers, together with the DS-410 signage participant, and how Google’s OS program has adjusted the activity for buyers from a variety of categories.

Peter Freudenberger, world-wide consumer and husband or wife income engineer lead for ChromeOS Flex, joined to share the tale of Google’s rising digital signage footprint.

‘Digital signage demands to do more’

Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2023, Advantech at this time holds 38% market share in IPC classification. “We’re not just below in North The united states,” Nieto stated. “We’re all over the world.”

This supports a electronic signage product line thanks to the OEM abilities of the company and its broad ecosystem, knowledgeable by the organization mission statement: “Enabling an clever world,” by means of sensible metropolis options like digital signage, Nieto included.

With main world-wide installations like examples at Picadilly Circus in London, England, Los Angeles, California and Times Sq. in New York City, among the other people, Advantech has qualified current market programs which includes out of doors signage (sensible bus stops, kiosks, wayfinding, and advertising and marketing) alongside with hospitality and QSR use conditions these kinds of as sign-in and purchasing kiosks.

Staying equipped to assist clever capabilities such as AI-run programmatic material — this kind of as digital out-of-property promotion, localized and personalised ads, or AI-run analytics — are all crucial in the new electronic signage industry, where “electronic signage desires to do extra,” Nieto reported.

“Long gone are the times when classic electronic signage is just, ‘Oh, we have a 1080 screen, and we have our pleasant, fairly menu, or we have 4K.’ All of our consumers say — and the development now in all three of these groups is — digital signage wants to do extra. It requires to have more operation. It requirements to supply some level of clever apps, AI.”

Advantech’s system is to combine goal-constructed electronic signage gamers for strong reliability with the overall flexibility and robustness of Google’s ChromeOS Flex this collaborative strategy aims to provide the rising needs across verticals, these types of as a case review Nieto mentioned with a key Canadian retailer utilizing Advantech’s DS-085 buying kiosks, applied by thousands of shoppers day by day and with lots of models staying in the subject for at the very least five many years.

Nieto reported the electrical power of the Advantech technique comes from merchandise longevity and localized help, along with the wide software potential of players like the DS-085 and DS-410 Nieto additional that the gamers enjoy a <1% failure rate across the product line of course, another core ingredient is being ChromeOS Certified Freudenberger helped elaborate on the ChromeOS side.

Google’s growth in digital signage

So, what exactly is Google doing in the digital signage space, and what makes ChromeOS Flex so flexible in digital signage uses?

ChromeOS Flex is a lightweight, cloud-based operating system designed to operate across virtually any hardware used in this industry, Freudenberger said. The broad application of Google across sectors and verticals helps give it insights into what is happening across the digital signage and kiosk world, he added.

“In the coming years, north of 80% of all retail sales will still be completed in physical locations,” Freudenberger said, citing the National Retail Foundation. This applies beyond retail, he explained, to nearly any category and industry that uses kiosks and digital signage. The assumption that in-office or brick and mortar retail experiences were dead is not true, and data from the past 18 months shows a different reality in offices, QSRs, retail and more in the post-lockdown world.

“The expectation for rich digital experiences has become greater than it ever has before,” he added. “People want to go to a mall or to a store, even to their office, and be informed, entertained. And what is fundamentally driving that all is technology. The demand for contextual, rich, smart and always-available experiences.”

The breadth of digital experiences demanded by consumers today means using a robust, lightweight, highly-secure operating system like Google OSFlex is more important than ever, Freudenberger explained, citing the rise of “shopper-tainment” in retail, with self-checkout and self-service screens and kiosks.

Traditional operating systems have problems like slow performance, requiring high-touch management, security problems like ransomware and viruses, expensive hardware, difficult update processes, difficult remote maintenance and more, Freudenberger explained, which is where the lightweight aspect of offerings like ChromeOS provide a welcome simplification in setup and maintenance for organizations in various verticals.

ChromeOS was engineered for simple, cloud-based device management, he said, along with affordability, built-in and proactive security and remote access.

Building a new signage ecosystem

Aiming for a durable, future-proof approach to the rapidly evolving needs of digital signage, Nieto and Freudenberger offered insights into the thought process behind the hardware and software ecosystem they are helping to develop for global customer groups across sectors and verticals.

To view the webinar on-demand, click here.