Userful, a provider of visual communication solutions, announced that its Visual Networking Platform now accelerates deployment of visual content throughout enterprises of all sizes with three developments:
- Data center support and augmented support for hybrid deployments. Userful’s support for a variety of server architectures—on premise, cloud, and now data center—ensures maximum customer flexibility and security. Certain enterprises focused on content within a LAN may opt for an on-premise server. Enterprises with the goal of sharing content to multiple facilities throughout a country or around the world will likely deploy their servers from a data center or the cloud. Enterprises with a variety of needs may opt for a hybrid deployment mixing different server architectures but still managing their entire infrastructure with Userful’s centralized management tools.
- Userful API for services integration. The Userful REST API now enables dynamic switching between content and back office applications/services, triggered by user control, local events, and/or Internet of Things (IoT) events. This enables enterprises to define a new range of custom engagements for customers and employees.
- Display ubiquity. Userful’s uClient (Ubiquitous Client) has added support for both Tizen and Android operating systems to its existing support for LG’s webOS. With this announcement, Userful now offers complete display ubiquity, enabling enterprises to work with any display, including a broad variety of commercial smart displays from a range of vendors. Enterprises can also deploy legacy displays using an adapter device.
With these new developments, Userful’s centralized architecture now empowers IT departments to manage the next generation of smart corporations, where IT teams don’t worry about compatibility between legacy applications, operating systems, and displays.
In 2018, Gartner analysts announced the emergence of a category called “The Visual Estate” that refers to the diverse array of display applications that are appearing as a result of digital transformation: “The screen has become the workplace,” wrote Stephen Emmott and Adam Preset. “Digital workplace application leaders are recognizing that a holistic strategy is desirable to manage the visual estate.” Whether it’s for employee engagement or customer engagement, the central theme is that increased use of visual applications increases overall engagement.
Userful offers features that include: CDN/ECDN, WAN optimization, industry-leading scalability, extensive source capture, REST API, mobile support, authentication, RBAC, encryption, remote management, web-based interface, analytics and reporting, and a broad range of streaming technologies. Userful serves the broad needs of enterprise IT departments in their integration of AV, allowing enterprises to connect any content source or legacy application—as well as data sets from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)—onto any display globally, providing enhanced interoperability across all their visual applications.
“Userful’s solutions are ideal for the most demanding enterprise applications, including control rooms, network operations centers, and similar mission critical operations. With the platform’s scalability, the same technology can be extended to digital operations, corporate signage, data metrics walls, and kiosk and tablet applications across the enterprise. The evolution of the Visual Networking Platform into a ubiquitous visual estate solution represents a critical tool for the IT department of the Next Generation Enterprise,” said John Marshall, Userful’s CEO. “It is nothing less than a solution for engaging customers and employees in entirely new ways to drive sales, employee training, and customer satisfaction; one engagement platform from the core to the edge of the enterprise.”
Userful will provide demonstrations of its complete Visual Networking Platform supporting all types of server architectures and displays at the Integrated Systems Expo (ISE), booth #8-C395, Feb. 11–14, 2020 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre.
 to most traditional or smart displays.){kind=link}