The Facility Technologist: A Call For Change

I was just reading a nice blog post/article from Tom Condon, RPA, FMA which has been published in the March 2009 issue of Today's Facility Manager. In a minute I will just lazy copy and paste the article (original can be found here) but before I do I like to point out that this is a great example why some technical parts (AV, security cameras etc) should be managed by IT. Tom sais Facility managers in general are not part of the building process early enough and this might be a fair comment but even if they are, are they capable of making the right decisions about stuff that needs to be on the IP network and that should talk to other components (eg the room reservation system that talks with the mail application (mostly MS Exchange), Camera's that should broadcast and be web viewable over the IP network (do they get the proper bandwidth to generate useable images/video streams) etc). So this might be a great call to involve the facility manager early in the process but to me it is even a bigger call to hand over stuff to IT (and have them early in the process as well). Then you have one single IP network with everything not just connected but also remote manageable and having the appropriate amount of bandwidth

Ok, here is the article (with is links at the end) with some highlights I put in there

All facility managers (fms) want technology in their buildings. Whether it’s in a small office buildout or a large skyscraper, technology is an increasingly critical tool for achieving the levels of performance that occupants now demand.

There are so many great technologies out there to help fms achieve their visions for the 21st century. And yet, the same fms who are technology enthusiasts are so often stymied by limitations that they inherited from the design and construction of their facilities. They would like to employ the most advanced technology, but find they are limited by what they have inherited. Consider the following examples:

One fm had a brand new facility and wanted to get Web access to her video surveillance cameras so she could view cameras from home at night and weekends—a great way to stay on top of what is happening. But she found that the video system in her brand new facility was analog only, and she’d have to replace the DVRs to get Web access, which was too costly to justify. The sad part? Web enabled DVRs would have cost only slightly more than the equipment that was installed. Unfortunately, the designer saw only the cost, not the extra functionality, and opted for the lowest cost option.

Another fm wanted to incorporate additional IP cameras to a digital video system, only to find there was not enough capacity on the security IP network. Ironically, a completely separate IP network was installed for the building automation system, but neither the security nor HVAC designers knew it. The combined capacity of the two networks was more than sufficient for what the fm wanted to do, but individually, they were too small. The end result was a costly replacement of switches on the security network, and the overall cost of the two networks was far more than what a single, efficient system would have been.

This scenario replays itself over and over again. But why are there so many disconnects between the technology needs of fms and the design of their facilities? One problem is that the fm is often not involved in the design until it is finished, and the building or buildout is already underway.

Sometimes the fm is not even involved until move in. This is a big mistake, as it assumes there is only one way to manage a facility. This approach fails to consider the fact that organizations are all different, and each one has special needs and uses for technology.In 21st century facility design, the fm should be involved as early as possible in the design of systems and the selection of products. No one will know which functionalities and attributes systems should have better than the fm.

Another big impediment to the implementation of facility technology is that the structure and process of traditional building design and construction has not kept pace with the evolution of technologies. In the traditional development process, an owner employs a team with an architect, engineers, and other designers, and the project is divided up among them. Each has a task that is viewed as distinct, with no need for each to work closely with the other designers. There is coordination at a macro level, where each individual design is incorporated in the overall design, but the individual designs are considered separate and distinct, and there is usually little collaboration.

This process has evolved over the last 100 years and reflects the 20th century paradigm in which each facility technology used its own individual hardware, cabling, and power. These systems never interacted in any way, and they operated on incompatible platforms, so there was no need for designers to work together. This is now an obsolete approach to designing a modern facility and the technologies that serve it.Today, facility technologies often use common hardware and cabling.

For example, access control, digital video, HVAC controls, and visitor management can all operate on the same IP network and can all share the same hardware using a virtualized server design. (Right now, I am sitting in a facility where VoIP, HVAC controls, access control, and digital video all reside on a single IP network that cost less than if these systems used their own individual infrastructures.) Not only can this approach cost significantly less than if each of these systems used its own cabling and individual servers, it is also easier to manage and secure a single system.

But it is impossible to create a comprehensive facility technology design with the fractured and disjointed approach that is now considered the standard. In a facility that seeks to employ cutting-edge technologies, there needs to be a single point of contact for the overall design. The technology designer (TD) advises consultants on which systems to select, the design of the building network and data center, and the ways that building systems will interact with each other in the completed building.

This person must be knowledgeable in all of the different technologies—and their latest advances—used in modern facilities. Just as important, the TD must also be able to understand the different perspectives of the traditional groups that are involved in design, construction, and management: operations (including facility and property management), security, IT, and A/E/C. This ability is referred to as being “quad lingual” in and around tech circles, and it is one of the key factors in the success or failure of complex facility technology projects.Here is an example of how this works. Right now, my firm is working on a one million square foot building. The owners wanted to ensure they would have the most advanced facility technologies, so they tapped us to make their wish list a reality. This is an insurance policy against the fate that so many facilities suffer, finding that they are constrained by technology limitations based solely on the use of an outdated design paradigm.

Changing the design process is not easy, and adding a TD to the team may be a stretch for more traditional professionals accustomed to doing things the 20th century way. But they will need to adapt to this new approach eventually; better to do it now and become an early adopter, rather than doing it later and becoming a casualty of advancing technology.

Condon, a Facility Technologist and former facility manager, is a contributing author for BOMI Institute’s revised Technologies in Facility Management textbook. He works for System Development Integration, a Chicago, IL-based firm committed to improving the performance, quality, and reliability of client business through technology.

Past Facility Technologist columns can be found here. To chat about this topic and others in real time, visit FacilityBlog.

A great new development in standardizing interconnection between AV devices

Hooking up

If there’s one safe bet in AV, it’s that the number of connection technologies will continue to increase.

One newcomer is Digital Interactive Interface for AV (DiiVA), which uses standard Cat6 cabling to link displays with sources such as DVD players, set-top boxes and the Internet.DiiVA (www.diiva.org) features four differential pairs. The first three can handle up to 4.5 Gbit/s each, enough to support uncompressed 1080p at 60 frames per second or Quad HD. The fourth pair can send more than 2 Gbit/s in one direction at the same time it’s receiving at the same rate.

That data channel can be used for tasks such as carrying Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 and command/control information.DiiVA also enables systems where iPhone-like icons appear on a display. Instead of fumbling for remotes to control different sources, such as DVD players, satellite set-top boxes and PCs, users would select the icon – such as the BBC or YouTube – representing the source they want to switch to.

That set-up also would allow users to watch all video on their TV, instead of going to a PC or the room where the DVD player is.“We want to develop a new, multimedia networking standard make TVs the centre of home network environment,” says Steve Yum, senior director of product planning at Synerchip, one of the companies backing DiiVA.

DiiVA initially will be aimed at the consumer market, including home AV networks. But if it builds a following there, it’s likely to expand into the pro market, just as predecessors such as HDMI did.In the pro space, DiiVA could be used for applications such as bars. For example, a bartender could use DiiVA’s GUI to switch a display from a football game, delivered via the satellite set-top box, to YouTube videos, delivered via a PC.

Let's now hope they add native snmp support and standards to this and they are not just easy to connect and control but also easy to manage, specially when it comes to the pro market. Then big savings can be made using a standard CAT6 nework with a standard management environment while reducing installation complexity (I hope)

I guess the home AV network here will look totally different in 5 to 10 years from now

CISCO now entering your home - Sony, Philips, Samsung, Onkyo etc watch out!!!!!

After moving into the enterprise AV market as discussed here Cisco is also moving into your living room. They already had a nice entry point with their wireless access points, routers and other network devices but now they really show off with some products not designed to hide away

They just announced at CES it's Wireless Home Audio line up and some NAS devices for home use. This is a nice start to compete with Sony, Philips, Samsung, LG, Pioneer, Onkyo etc. The way they do this is a smart one. They do not start with the entry from the consumer electronics site being a direct competitor from sony, philips etc when showing their AV systems but taking a d-tour via the network

The digital living room is slowly becoming reality since we all have our live reduced to some bits and bytes (digital pictures, DIVX movies, MP3 music, IPTV (remember CISCO already has an IPTV platform), DVR etc) but integration and implementation into a living room is still not easy. Microsoft does a nice try with Windows home server and Mediacenter (I have both and really like my them but there is still some room for improvement, also from the content and service delivery parties to work together to give the consumers an great offering). However these initiatives are still not there for everybody and you need to be tech savy to manage this infrastructure.

Maybe CISCO can elevate the digital living room to a new level that can be used by anyone (including older people that did not grow up with computers). So the big questions are:

• Can they provide an easy to implement infrastructure
• Can they handle all media formats nicely (some standardization would be nice but I guess we are not there yet)
• Is it open enough to work with other devices in the home
• Do they have the rigth partners to make it a great offering for the consumers (I still hate it that my digital TV from UPC can not be integrated into my mediacenter (or MCE/VMC alternative) in a nice way)
• Do they provide the right applications so it will be an integrated experience (how will they fit in their line of home monitoring cameras for example)

At least they start of with a nice lineup and they support the most important standards. Hope they are easy to upgrade in terms of functionality and support of standards. The line up is:

The WHA is a whole-house, multi-zone audio system using Ethernet and draft 802.11n wireless networking and DLNA 1.5. The lineup includes three players, powered speakers, a wireless touch-screen controller and iPod dock, all scheduled to hit stores this quarter with pricing starting at $300 for the entry-level player.

The DMC350 Conductor Wireless-N Digital Music Center is an all-in-one wireless music system with integrated speakers, seven inch LCD touch screen, integrated CD player and IR Remote. Pricing was not announced and it appears that this will be the last family member to become available.



The DMC250 Director Wireless-N Music Player with Integrated Amplifier ($449.99 MSRP) drops the CD player and speakers and adds a 50 W amplifier.

The DMP100 Player Wireless-N Music Extender ($299.99 MSRP) is the entry-level player. It has stereo line outputs and all the functions of the more expensive player options, but no display, CD player or amplifier.

The DMWR1000 Controller Wireless-N Touchscreen Remote ($349.99 MSRP) features a large color touchscreen and thumbwheel and can be used to control all players and a docked iPod The other components available include the DSPK50 Stereo Speaker Kit ($149.99 MSRP), MCCI40 iPod Dock ($79.99 MSRP). Additional DMRIR500 IR Remotes (that come with all players) can be purchased for $29.99(MSRP).

For your purchasing convenience, Cisco has kindly assembled three kits:

• Premier ($999.99 MSRP)Two-room starter kit with Director and IR Remote, Player and IR Remote, and Wireless-N Controller.


• Trio ($849.99 MSRP)2 Players, 2 IR Remotes, and a Wireless-N Controller, for adding the WHA to existing audio systems.


• Executive ($549.99 MSRP)Single room kit with Director, IR Remote and speakers.
  

Along with the WHA, Cisco also kicked loose a new line of NASes that put its previous NAS200 to shame. The Media Hub line consists of three two-bay NASes with a very friendly Flash-driven web interface, UPnP AV / DLNA and iTunes servers, photo slideshow, remote access and NTI Shadow-bundled backup (for Windows only).
The NMH405 (500 GB) and NMH410 (1 TB) models both include a front panel LCD display and 6-in-1 card reader. The NMH305 does not have the LCD or card reader and sells for $50 less than the 405. All versions come with one drive—you add the second to either expand capacity (JBOD) or increase security (RAID 1).

MSRPs are $429.99 for the NMH410, $349.99 for the NMH405 and $299.99 for the NMH305. All will be available shortly.

Just got my Streamium:)

I'm in a buzz program and that's a pretty cool thing since I get the opportunity to play around with some pretty nice things and buzz about it. More information on this buzz program can be found here.


So here is my buzz on this streamium (philips streamium network music player NP2500). Basically I like to see my media integrted in the house. Just 1 central location to strore all my pictures, music and video including recorded TV and then be able to play this everywhere in the house. This is why I'm having a mediacenter with a homeserver for backups.


When I got the opportunity to buzz this product I smiled when signing up since this fits perfectly in my vision on the digital lifestyle.

After opening the box my first impression was "Whoooo this looks great and fits in any (living)room". Obviously I did not read any manual but just started installing. Put the installation CD in my mediacenter (since this is the central media storage) and the whole installation of the server part was an easy job. It installls Twonky Media and the server side is ready (ok, I just found out the regular UPnP could have done the trick as well)

Then turning on the device and follow the on screen instructions. Everybody can do this again even without a manual (but with their security codefor their wireless network and it might be a bit more complicated if your wireless setup is not a pretty strightforward one).

So time to listen to music from the media store and internet Radio and this sounded great but here there was a set back. Browsing took ages. ok I admit I have a lot of music but this to me was pretty disappointing and when browsing a large library (or massive list of internet radio stations) the system is a bit unresponsive.

Let's hope this is because the player will do do background stuff in the beginning (built a list or something like that) and speed will be better if this is completed. I also shall try it agin if I put it wired to the network.

Another thing is that this is a seperate device and there is a tendency to built this into receivers (Denon, Yamaha etc). On the other hand, in the bedroom I now just have this with a set of JBL speakers (so it matches the design of the streamium since this absolutely great)

In general my first impression is pretty positive but have to play with it a bit more. I think I will keep this post updated by giving replies to my own post


Update:

ok, played around with it a bit and really love it. Figured out that the standard UPnP works better in my network than the twonky media server so streaming from the mediacenter goes really nice.

So far a great device for a room where a small mediaplayer with some simple speakers (I have the JBL creature II in black which is a perfect match)

Sound is very good

The only con is still the speed of browing the music collection. Still will try to wire it up with the built in ethernet connection and see if that goes better than wireless

Cisco is moving into AV world FAST!!!!!!

As you can read in the digitalsignagetoday post as copied and pasted below (click here for original), Cisco is moving in a new direction. After creating their IP/TV platform and stepping into the Videoconferencing market with HP (ok telepresence) they also are moving into digital signage. This looks like their strategy is to be dominant in the AudioVisual market as well. This bigger clue about the convergence between ICT and AV cannot be found




SAN JOSE, Calif. — Cisco is working to make it easier to view video content on many different formats, such as digital signage, desktop and mobile phone screens, with a new media processing technology.

The networking company today announced a platform that simplifies live and on-demand video sharing across digital signage networks, PCs and mobile phones, by automatically formatting video and rich media for viewing on any device.

Driving the new platform is the Cisco Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3000, which delivers the ability to transcode a single source of content so that it is playable on those devices. It also delivers real-time post production and processing capabilities such as watermarking, voice and video editing, text and image overlays and noise reduction to create broadcast quality video experiences.



“Many employees have access to PCs to receive video messages, but there may be a high percentage that don’t,” said Thomas Wyatt, general manager, DMSBU. “They can get access to that very same content through digital signage or enterprise TV. Playing video back on multiple devices is something we’re seeing customers wanting to invest in, especially in a challenged economic environment.”

Janice Litvinoff, director of product management, DMSBU, says that the first applications of the new media platform are likely to come in the education and corporate communications sectors.

“The use of video to communicate change is becoming more critical,” she said. “In tough times you don’t want to use email to communicate important news. Say a company needs to get a CEO’s message out to all employees. Now it can come from one source and reach everyone.”

Grounded, but connected

Litvinoff also said that Cisco is positioning is DMS suite as a way to cut back on operating expenditures in tough economic times.

“The new media processing platform will reduce the time it takes to communicate critical messages,” she said. “The hours it takes to produce video will be reduced, saving time and operating expenditures.”

Litvinoff also said that Cisco predicts some of its more than 800 DMS customers can use the communications suite and its TelePresence capabilities as a way to communicate without having to travel, saving time and money for those companies.

“Hardly anyone here at Cisco is traveling right now unless absolutely necessary,” she said. “We’re all grounded and communicating through DMS.”

Entering the LCD screen market

Cisco’s Digital Media System consists of Digital Media Manager software, Digital Media Players and now the MXE 3000. The system is commonly used for corporate communications, desktop video and telepresence.

Also joining the DMS family are two Professional Series LCD displays designed for use with the system. Available in 40- and 52-inch models, the screens feature full 1080p resolutions and are controlled remotely from the Cisco Digital Media Manager, which allows users to change the volume, contrast, brightness and turn the screen on and off.

The Cisco Media Experience Engine and Cisco LCD 100 PRO 40N and LCD 110 PRO 52S are available immediately.

The crucial role of ICT and AV within organizations

The role of ICT and AV within organizations


Communicating is a crucial element in the process of working and learning. This implies in a clear way that all facilities enabling communication need to function extremely well. Communication is already pretty difficult so anything to avoid miscommunication can make a big difference. ICT and AV (Audiovisual) systems support the communication process and enable groups of individuals working together to make better and/or faster decisions. This can generate a competitive advantage which again shows the value of ICT and AV systems in this era


When looking at the current global economic situation it is important to get most out of your ICT and AV environment against the lowest possible costs for that level of quality required. Lowering the costs too much might undermine a smooth operation and can compromise the minimum level of quality needed.

Although ICT budgets are under pressure as well there is no doubt about the importance of the CIO within an enterprise environment. According to Forrester Research the CIO’s key to success is choosing a small number of metrics that are relevant to the business and have the most impact on business outcomes. The five metrics that meet the criteria for relevance and impact are

• Investment alignment to business strategy,
• Business value of IT investments,
• IT budget balance,
• Service level excellence,
• Operational excellence.
  

These five metrics should form the core of an ICT performance scorecard and in order to perform well on all items on the scorecard the CIO should understand the business needs and deliver on this with well managed services (and costs).

However, when looking at the AV environment within an organization it appears that this is perceived and valued totally different. Often there is no strong alignment with the business strategies nor an AV performance scorecard and the responsibilities for managing the operational and service level excellence is much lower on the ladder. Pretty often this is just a contract management role where knowledge of the AV concepts doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite. This in general leads to an ad-hoc approach instead of a well structured AV performance scorecard approach

Structures to support

When looking at AV as stated earlier support is often done by the AV supplier and is reactive in nature while IT support is often organized according to the best practices as described within the ITIL framework where we can use the ITIL v3 core volumes

• Service Strategy focuses on the identification of market opportunities for which services could be developed in order to meet a requirement on the part of internal or external customers. The output is a strategy for the design, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the service as an organizational capability and a strategic asset. Key areas of this volume are Service Portfolio Management and Financial Management.


• Service Design focuses on the activities that take place in order to develop the strategy into a design document which addresses all aspects of the proposed service, as well as the processes intended to support it. Key areas of this volume are Availability Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management and Security Management.


• Service Transition focuses on the implementation of the output of the service design activities and the creation of a production service or modification of an existing service. There is an area of overlap between Service Transition and Service Operation. Key areas of this volume are Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management and Service Knowledge Management.


• Service Operation focuses on the activities required to operate the services and maintain their functionality as defined in the Service Level Agreements with the customers. Key areas of this volume are Incident Management, Problem Management and Request Fulfillment. A new process added to this area is Event Management, which is concerned with normal and exception condition events. Events have been defined into three categories:
  o Informational events, which are logged
  o Warning events, also called alerts, where an event exceeds a specified threshold
  o Critical events, which typically will lead to the generation of Incidents


• Continual Service Improvement focuses on the ability to deliver continual improvement to the quality of the services that the ICT organization delivers to the business. Key areas of this volume are Service Reporting, Service Measurement and Service Level Management
  

In general these core volumes can be applied to the management of an AV infrastructure as well and this would lead to lower support costs while having an AV infrastructure that fits the needs better and operates more stable due to the pro-active nature of the ITIL processes. Within AV support some of these processes are there already (but not always as mature as within the ICT domain) but other in general are absent like incident management or life cycle management. This would strongly plead for using the ITIL best practices in AV management as well (and possibly even using the same set of management tools where possible since the IT department may already have e.g. an incident management registration tool).

Blending both worlds even further.

When looking at the services both parties provide we used to have some clear distinction. For example the IT department delivered services like messaging and collaboration or network connectivity (wired, wireless and mobile) while from an AV point of view services like (video)conferencing or presentation/meeting rooms were offered.

When looking at the convergence that is taking place right now we see transitions where projectors get network connected, traditional (video)conferencing/telepresence systems integrating with webcams and meeting room reservation systems being available from the IT messaging system.

As a result the boundaries between the services delivered by the IT department and AV management are getting fuzzy. When looking at the ICT messaging and collaboration service this in general includes platforms like exchange, Office Communication Server and Sharepoint.
Traditionally meeting room reservation systems are managed by the AV team, as well as (video)conferencing or digital signage/narrow casting.

With all convergence going on we see digital signage products based on sharepoint, meeting room reservation systems integrating with outlook/exchange and (video)conferencing solutions working nicely together with office communication server.

This fundamentally reshapes the traditional services landscape and it would make sense to have the AV components managed by the same team that already manages the ICT infrastructure. There are some good reasons to do it this way around and not the other:

• The ICT department most likely already has the support tools and processes in place
• Since AV components will be more and more ICT components (projectors on the network, video over IP, etc.) ICT needs to integrate this in their network anyhow and thus will have a strong say in the choices made
• AV components and their networked interactivity are becoming more and more complex so it would make sense to have the most technical group taking care of them
  

Next steps

The AV industry should ensure the devices they design and built will support standards like SNMP so they will be easier to manage without the need for a layer in between as is needed today.

On the other hand enterprises should think about a clear strategy on their AV environment and how to integrate this with the ICT environment. This obviously can be a long term strategy to avoid disinvestments by replacing components that are still in the middle or beginning of their economic lifecycle (unless replacement would deliver a cost benefit that is bigger than the disinvestment). This can be done according to the IT’s AVision model as defined by MII that will lead you through the steps necessary for your organization (steps in maturity are outlined below, note this is not the complete model)

Last but not least, the CIO should prepare for taking control of the AV components as well. This means he needs to make sure that the AV specific technology is understood so he can keep delivering on the expectations

Conclusion

By integrating your AV support and ICT support in 1 support model (preferably ITIL) and using 1 set of tools the costs of managing the integrated environment will go down while the support moves from reactive to proactive. This obvious will result in a situation where communication can migrate to more effective communication

IT’s AVision™

In a few steps to an integrated IT and AV environment

In general an IT environment is well structured and processes and tools are usually based upon the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) concepts. It would make sense to use the same approach to manage your AV environment to increase availability and save costs. MII can help you in a few steps to an integrated vision on managing your integrated IT and AV infrastructure and helps to define a path to the integrated environment using MII's unique IT’s AVision™ methodology. In a diagram it looks like the 4 steps as outlined below. It provides the vision with a growth path attached to it to avoid a disinvestment of the current environment(s)


No matter of the current stage of maturity of your AV environment the methodology can be applied to help you migrate from level 1 (completely stand alone) to level 4 (fully managed integrated environment) for all items and not just the obvious like projectors. These 4 levels are shown here.
If you like to know more about how MIIcan help you save money while increasing quality without desinvestments please contact MII (http://www.mii.nu/ or info@mii.nu )

Using digital signage in an enterprise environment, should you choose an AV or IT solution?

When looking at digital signage wiki tells us:
Digital signage are electronic displays that are installed in public spaces. Digital signs are typically used to entertain, inform or advertise (together known as "adfotainment"). Major benefits of digital signs over traditional static signs are that the content can be exchanged without effort, animations can be shown, the signs can adapt to the context and audience, and even be interactive. Digital signage advertising is a form of out-of-home advertising in which content and messages are displayed on digital signs, typically with the goal of delivering targeted messages to specific locations at specific times.

Key points here are that we use them to entertain, inform or advertise and that they can easily adapt to context and audience. This makes it a great tool for marketing/sales but also for use in a corporate environment. When looking at implementations in a corporate environment there are some obvious benefits compared to traditional systems like e.g. paper based posters to go for a digital signage solution:

• Greater speed to communicate and (re)act,
• Cost saving compared to print and distribute paper based posters,
• Less waste and impact on environment compared to e.g. paper based posters,
• Much more possibilities in terms of media to use (text, audio, video)
• Possibilities for interactivity
• Image (a wall with 1 big screen looks different than a lot of posters on the same wall)

However there are some challenges as well that organizations will face when implementing a digital signage solution to communicate to their staff (and customers at the location of the office):

• In general the available systems are proprietary which makes it hard to expand them (in size) or to add new functionality to the implementation, especially when this is not standard functionality of the product as is. This means that whenever selecting the product and the partner you do not only need to look at the current needs and demands but also at the future to avoid a disinvestment
• How to use the screens and fit them into the corporate managed infrastructure. Are you using the screens only for showing content or are the part of a larger vision where you for example use them for displaying corporate information when idle. Are you considering using existing screens to be part of the system (and do not think about the obvious screens only, what about the room reservation system screens)
  
  One of the biggest strengths of digital signage is the ability to update content across all screens from a central location — it represents the end of counting on employees to travel from location to location, changing POP materials turning the devices on or off. But surprisingly, most of the people digital signage today surveyed aren’t taking advantage of this — more than half of the respondents who use digital signage have their screens centrally networked. Instead, they are relying on “sneakernet” update methods, such as manually inserting DVDs or flash cards at the screen level.
  
• Who is allowed to generate content, is there a workflow required between creation and publication. Will all employees be able to generate content but before publication it needs to be signed of by the editor (to check the content against the guidelines, guard the corporate style and make sure the content is appropriate). Is the content already available on the corporate network or will this be delivered by e.g. a 3rd party
• What type of content (audio, video (standard definition, high definition and live streams), text and which formats are needed)
• What type of employees do you have and what is your companies working style. Is everybody always in the office or is everybody working flexible, not just flexible seating but also flexible locations (working from home, hotel, airport, customer location) and how do you like to fit this in the communication plan
• What about different content for different target audiences (customers vs employees, office bound employees versus home working/traveling employees, different physical office locations)
  

From this point of view it would be wise when looking for a digital signage system not to focus on the traditional solutions only but also look in the ICT domain and explore the options a SharePoint based digital signage system can do for you (great examples are

netpresenter and advantive) . These systems in general are:

• Less rigid since it’s a platform on which you can easily create extensions
• Far more easy to integrate in your existing infrastructure and for a lot of companies it already is integrated to a certain extend before starting off building a digital signage solution on top of the platform.
• Give more possibilities to reach out to your employees that are working from a location that is not your office. You can for example also publish to a screensaver or tickertape on any employees pc
• Easy to integrate with your existing intranet and extranet
• Completely integrated with all office products you probably already use so information publishing can be done directly from the applications used to create the info (while you can still use workflow management for approval before publishing)
• Cheaper (especially if you already have the licenses for SharePoint)
• Managing the digital signage environment can be done with the existing management tools you also use for managing the rest of your infrastructure. Also managing a sharepoint based environment is managing something familiar instead of a total new concept

Again this is a great example of IT and AV blending together and creating new opportunities for cost savings while increasing flexibility, agility and availability