Digicom Technology News

Irish Whiskey Collection Store

The Retail Excellence Awards are about celebrating retail stores and promoting best practice in the Irish retail industry. This awards ceremony has become one of the most anticipated and prestigious events on the retail calendar. It has become the benchmark by which the best in retail are judged.

The winners of the National Company of the Year/Industry Leader and Retail Store of the Year were The Loop, Dublin Airport and The Irish Whiskey Collection, Terminal 2 respectively. Within these retail spaces, Digicom were nominated to design and install a digital signage system which comprised of both hardware and software.

David Fitzsimons, Chief Executive of Retail Excellence commented "What Aer Rianta International and specifically The Loop have been doing at Dublin Airport is inspirational. They have reinvented airport shopping not just in Ireland but across the world". Part of their success was the meticulous research they carried out. The DAA do very little without speaking to the customer first. The ideas that they have are researched with their customers after talking to them one on one or in focus groups. Outcomes of the research included installing flat panel screens with digital signage.

There are many features and benefits not offered by static displays and signage that the retail space in Terminal 2 in now experiencing. The dynamic digital signage is grabbing customer's attention and is influencing their purchasing decision right at the point of purchase. It is also eliminating the high cost of creating and distributing print ad campaigns. The digital signage system in place is instant and offers the ability to change promotions immediately for various products or particular customers. Another advantage of the digital displays over static is that the retailers have the potential to earn money with their digital signage network by selling advertising space to their suppliers.

The big challenge to the DAA was how to engage with a new breed of customer that views the airport as a bus stop. Impressively the DAA have delivered on this front having experienced a 30% increase in Irish whiskey sales since the opening of the Irish Whiskey Collection store in T2. Their digital signage system has played a significant role in achieving engagement with customers.

Whether it is intended to build a brand, influence customer behaviour or simply provide information, the dynamic visual experience created by digital signage will ultimately increase sales.

Please click here for more information on the Retail Excellence Awards.

NEC Display has introduced the VE281 and VE281X mobile projectors, which are aimed at small meeting rooms, schools and conference room installs. Both projectors are specified at 2,800 lumens, offer auto power on and quick startup/shutdown, an Eco Mode, a carbon savings meter and extended filter life. They also have energy-saving features such as NEC's Intelligent Driving Scheme (IDS2) technology to extend the lamp life of the projector up to 6,000 hours in Eco Mode and 4,000 hours in normal use.


The VE281 is native SVGA (800x600) resolution and the VE281X is native XGA (1024x768) resolution, using a one-chip DLP engine with a BrilliantColor chip with a specified contrast ratio of 3,000:1. Inputs include HDMI and VGA (both ports automatically turn on the projector when they detect a signal). The VE281 and VE281X will be available in January 2013.

If you would like more information on projectors, please contact Digicom today.

Over the past few years, personal video conferencing has promised to enter the enterprise mainstream, with laptops, tablets, and phones operating on upgraded networks capable of supporting real-time audio and video communications. Many corporations are looking to embrace personal video conferencing as both a stand-alone application and as part of an overall Unified Communications (UC) deployment because rich media communications can speed decision making, help build stronger teams, and ultimately drive top line revenues as part of a sales strategy. Avaya recently commissioned a study with the aim of establishing the requirements for successfully deploying pervasive personal video. Below is a brief discussion and results from the study.

Many of today's crop of personal video conferencing systems have overcome the limitations of the past – ease of use, video quality, bandwidth management, and reliability. And while many enterprise managers may have the perception that wide-scale deployment of personal video would be possible only as part of a UC platform rollout, it is actually very achievable and affordable using traditional MCUbased video conferencing. An added benefit to MCU-based video is its extensive feature set and room systems compatibility which contrasts with many UC-based solutions. Rolling out a personal video conferencing service to managers and information workers has significant benefits beyond travel savings – including improved team building, better integration of resources, and faster decision making while allowing for a richer interaction. A factor that is often overlooked is the need to deploy to a critical mass of users. Scale is essential to making video calling an everyday experience. Configuring the network to support personal video conferencing and the required bandwidth is an important step, but not one that is particularly onerous with today's technology and services.

The follow are the results of the study:

• Enterprises should evaluate the new generation of personal video conferencing solutions as a vehicle to increase sales, strengthen partnerships, and improve internal team building. The current crop of personal video collaboration solutions are enterprise-ready and overcome the scalability, reliability, and quality issues that plagued desktop video conferencing years ago. 
• Avoid creating islands of communication. Integrate room systems with personal and mobile video conferencing solutions, bringing added value to both sets of investments. Integrated deployments should support high quality audio and video and easy connections inside and outside the firewall.
• Create a small, end-user driven team of product champions with participation from at least one high level executive. Have IT represented on the team, but do not have only IT department members. Include the network specialists and line-of-business users.
• Communicate internally to all involved with information on what will happen and when so that colleagues can monitor the progress of the deployment project. Include training sessions and provide documentation on how to use the new solution effectively.
• Communicate after the deployment about how the solution is being used and what benefits workers are seeing. This will encourage others to use video, making the solution more valuable to all.

NEC’s Digital Signage Solutions provide a complete bundled product for customers that need a commercial-grade display and computer to source basic content. The V422-PC bundle includes a 42” V422 display and NET-SBC-04 single board computer seamlessly integrated utilizing the expansion slot of the display. This built-in functionality allows for a clean, hidden integration while reducing the bill of materials needed for installation.

• Bundled solution includes 42” NEC V422 and NET-SBC-04 single board computer for simple digital signage
• Full 1080p high-definition resolution provides stunning detail
• Commercial-grade LCD panel and components
• Expanded connectivity with digital loop through
• TileMatrix™ allows you to create video walls up 10 x10
• Ethernet and RS-232 Control and Communication allows for ease in remote monitoring
• NEC’s Content Management Software (CMS), a SaaS web-based digital signage software, is available at no charge

The theme for 2013---according to Gartner---is that the information technology department has to navigate cloud, social, mobility and information as those trends play off of each other. Gartner analyst David Cearley believes that a strategic technology will impact the enterprise over the next three years.

"These technologies will cause major disruption to your environment," said Cearley. "This list is a starting point."

Here's the overview:


Among the key points are:

Mobile as the top two picks isn't all that surprising. Mobile device management is top of mind with technology excutives. Meanwhile, employees are bringing all sorts of devices to work. That trend could is set to get become more significant since Windows 8 will bring 140 form factors to market.

Gartner predicts that Android and iOS will dominate smartphones, but Windows Phone will gain "substantial share." For tech execs, the actual players don't manage. They have to get a handle on securing data and managing choice.

Cearley said that by 2015, 70 percent of companies will have one executive in charge of overseeing Internet-connected devices and objects. The payoff will be in the supply chain, control and information services. "The Internet of things has applications across multiple industries," said Cearley.

The Ricoh Document Governance Index 2012 sets out the impact today’s business environment is having on business-critical document processes – the core interactions that occur regularly and repeatedly within HR, finance, procurement and accounts, driving every organisation, keeping employees on board, cash flowing, and making sure businesses are meeting legal and compliance requirements.


Comparing the 2012 results with what we found in 2009, we can see:

• Business leaders are puzzled by the process priority jigsaw, and as a result many are failing to ensure their critical document processes keep up. Big data, emerging markets and managing multiple vendors were highlighted as the main trends impacting their document processes in 2012.


• Fewer than half have a fully developed and implemented document process management strategy, just a 4 per cent improvement since 2009. Meanwhile, many have set targets outside of a strategic framework, indicating confusion about the best way to ensure they keep up with the pace of change.


• The last three years have seen an inverse shift in priority targets for document processes, with business risk replacing cost as the top priority. But new targets are replacing others, indicating businesses are struggling to fit them all together under a strategic framework.


• Reviews are regular, but are they effective? Most businesses are reviewing document processes regularly, but the majority do not make changes as a result. This indicates businesses are adopting a high-level approach which makes it difficult to fully understand how these processes are being managed, what the bottlenecks are, and how to make improvements – not to mention monitoring the processes and implementing new ways of working on an ongoing basis.

European businesses can gain competitive advantage by mastering business-critical document processes, but the first step in this journey is to develop a rigorous process strategy for the long term.

Working with a specialist partner such as Digicom will help businesses solve the process priority puzzle, by:

• creating a strategy to manage document processes with targets linking to business objectives


• carrying out ongoing reviews that will drive change


• fixing processes that aren’t working, to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the entire business.

Polycom the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), announced significant enhancements to the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform that make it an even more comprehensive and flexible software infrastructure for delivering video collaboration from private, public, and hybrid clouds. The new enhancements also make the RealPresence Platform more universally accessible by ensuring multi-vendor interoperability, eliminating barriers to access, and bringing down the cost for enterprises to video-enable their organizations and for service providers to extend from Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) to expanded Video Collaboration-as-a-Service (VCaaS) offerings delivered from Polycom-powered clouds.


Polycom introduced the industry’s first open standards-based Scalable Video Coding (SVC) protocol, delivering 3X the previous capacity for HD multipoint video calls for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, superior performance, and backwards- and forwards-compatibility to protect customer investments. Polycom also today introduced Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, the industry’s first multi-protocol, integrated software MCU that runs on industry-standard servers.

In a related announcement, Polycom introduced RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite, an extension of RealPresence Platform that lets customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype®, Facebook®, Google Talk™, and business video and UC applications via a browser for B2B and B2C video conferencing with the highest quality, reliability, and security.

“At Polycom, we continue to bolster our RealPresence Platform software infrastructure with interoperability enhancements designed to ensure customers are future-proofed and able to quickly leverage trends such as BYOD, mobile computing, and social networking that offer new opportunities to extend enterprise-grade video conferencing to the masses. Polycom is laser-focused on open standards-based interoperability for two key reasons: first, to protect our customers’ investments and ensure backwards- and forwards-compatibility; second, to remove all impediments that limit the ubiquitous adoption of video collaboration,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president of Products and Services, Polycom.

Below is a brief summary of the announcements made:

• Powerful Polycom® RealPresence® Platform enhancements include industry’s first open standards-based SVC (Scalable Video Coding), with 3X HD multipoint video call capacity for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, superior performance, and backwards- and forwards-compatibility to protect customer investments—all available through a software update

• Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, is industry’s first multi-protocol, integrated software MCU that runs on industry-standard servers Polycom extends firewall traversal and security options with Polycom® RealPresence® Access Director™, vastly improving capacity and supported protocols for improved B2B and B2C connectivity

• Building on earlier Polycom RealPresence Platform enhancements, including multi-tenancy support and open APIs, service providers can expand VaaS offerings more efficiently at scale

• In related announcement, Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite, an extension of Polycom RealPresence Platform, lets customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype®, Facebook®, Google Talk™, and business video applications via a browser, for B2B and B2C video conferencing with the highest quality, reliability, and security.