Userful introduces new Visual Networking Platform capabilities

Userful debuted new capabilities for its Visual Networking Platform. New features for edge computing enable retailers to seamlessly deploy digital signage and legacy retail applications to all their visual display devices—from light-emitting diodes to kiosks, tablets, video walls and single displays—either on-premises or remotely. Userful eliminates the compatibility challenges of large-scale display deployments, allowing retailers to deploy digital signage, new applications, legacy applications and related retail services onto any display.
  
“Userful’s technology arms retailers with the capability to leverage their display assets to improve the customer interaction, enhance the retail experience and improve back-office operations,” Dan Griffin, Userful's VP of marketing, said in a statement. “When deploying new content sources and applications, retailers can mix new and older displays, tablets and displays of any type or brand without worrying if the new content or applications will work with the display infrastructure. They can also scale up their display infrastructure as they open new stores.”   
 
In addition to the seamless integration of all display devices, Userful’s retail platform:

  • Supports cloud and edge-servers: Userful supports content from both the cloud and edge servers. For retailers operating on a franchise model, a local manager can display content from the corporate office supporting the brand while also displaying locally generated content with this week’s promotions, for example. 
  • Enhances security: Whether supporting wall-mounted displays or tablets, no content resides on the end-use device, so if a tablet is lost or stolen, there is no risk of losing sensitive information. 
  • Enables flexible deployment of displays: Retailers can combine any screen from any device to create giant canvases of product displays, videos or other content. They can also pull devices, such as tablets, off a canvas where it can revert to handling other applications, such as point-of-sale.
  • Leverages content from any source: Userful allows retailers to tie together content from any source, such as Windows or Linux, even though the device runs Android, for example. It also supports both legacy and new applications.
  • Features remote management: Retailers can manage their displays from anywhere at any time through an app on their mobile device.