Alcatel Lucent Joins the DS Marketplace

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The digital signage market is maturing rapidly. Increasingly, the half-baked solutions of the past are being replaced with larger, more dependable ones. Alcatel Lucent is positioning itself to offer quality solutions to the DS market.
 
By Marco Tomsu, Head of Media and Advertising Services, Alcatel Lucent
 
As the long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and optics technologies,and a pioneer in applications and services. The company achieved revenues of 16 billion Euros in 2010 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.
 
The source of this strength lies with the company’s R&D arm, Bell Labs, one of the world´s foremost centres of research and innovation in communications technology. The company invested 2.4 billion Euros in R&D in 2010.

 
Services represent a substantial part of the company’s business. More than 900 people in ALU Germany work in Services. The company is now leveraging its resources to offer its service to digital signage businesses.
 
The company has worked as prime contractor with several partners on a number of complex digital signage projects. It is also the central hub to thousands of system integrators around the world, giving it the resources to deal with the complex issue of integrating DS systems into clients’ existing IT landscapes. It provides the technical infrastructure and rollout management  and operates networks of any size, nationally and internationally. This makes Alcatel-Lucent a useful partner for those DS specialists who may not be able to support their clients anytime and anywhere in terms of infrastructure.
 
The company operates in several ‘traditional’ DS markets. In late 2009, it launched Taxi-TV, an innovative  solution for presenting news and advertising in taxis. After a successful pilot involving 100 taxis in Stuttgart, the solution has been rolled out in three more German cities: Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt.
 
The company also focuses on concepts to design or improve In-store-TV installations for an innovative image of the shop or branch. It has installed digital signage and live TV in branch offices of a financial service company in South America, giving the client the means to offer a better customer experience and facilitating faster deployment of marketing campaigns.
 
The company is also working to provide new opportunities for transport authorities to enrich their services through the integration of passenger information with infotainment, service news and advertising. Making the systems interact with mobile applications on smart-phones is a further exciting possibility. Alcatel-Lucent is  currently installing a new passenger mobility assistant for a large transport provider in Germany. The combination of in-transport infotainment with an event and navigation guide on the smart-phone points the way toward increasingly intelligent and integrated dynamic traffic information systems.  Because of the company’s long history in the telecoms industry, it is well placed to develop a digital signage infrastructure capable of interacting  with mobile phones.
 
Alcatel Lucent believes that interactivity is the key to successful digital signage. The company recently presented its new interactive gaming billboard concept in partnership with  the travel label Marco Polo. With  interactivity, companies can achieve a much higher impact in terms of brand communication. Innovative technology was developed at Bell Labs to link advertising information and gaming,  and this gave rise to a powerful tool to engage passers-by.
 
The company can integrate new interactive technologies such as gesture controlled, camera-based recognition, face  and audience tracking solutions to ensure that customers stay ahead of the game.
 
Three Quick Questions to Marco Tomsu

 
DS Europe: What encouraged you to enter the DS market?
 
MARCO TOMSU: The media and advertising market will continue to grow significantly. There is also a strong shift toward more complex and more professionally operated technical solutions. The DS market is currently going through a period of maturation. Business models are becoming more realistic, and there is much greater demand for professional cooperation between companies. With our established competencies in media, IT and telecommunications, we are ideally positioned to be successful in this space.
 
DS: How have you ensured that your offering is special?
 
MT: We have a strong local presence as well as broad global technical expertise that is available for local projects. We have shown that on a day-to-day basis in many projects. From business consulting through tailormade customer-specific integration of complex solutions to professional network management and operations, we work very closely with clients to deliver what they need. For example, we are responsible for operating the E-Plus network in Germany and managing the rollout of new technology for them. We don’t engage in selling ad space or providing content for the digital signage; as a neutral technical service provider with several partners we deal purely with infrastructure and the enablement of services.
 
DS: What is your vision for the future?
 
MT: In the years to come, there won’t be a single train station, shopping centre, bank or doctor’s surgery that doesn’t have some sort of multimedia installation. The need for higher quality technical presentations and content design will increase further and will dictate that market participants build their expertise. Next to purely passive screen-based signage, we will see the steady onward march of interactivity in a  variety of forms. Connecting the concepts of our clients with other technologies such as mobile applications on smart-phones will be an ever-greater part of our  business. Exciting times are ahead!