Introduction
In the digital signage area, a large part of the expenses is represented by the purchase of management servers, displays, PCs for content visualisation (players). The capital expenditure to deploy a new network can be optimized by some evaluations:
- by using a software able to run on less powerful, therefore less expensive machines
- managing the network with a service provided by a reliable vendor, eliminating the need of an own infrastructure
For those reasons, a particular care is needed for the resource usage of the Digital Signage Player, that can run effortlessly even on PCs with Atom CPU.
Furthermore, the choice to deliver the solution as a service, take advantage of the technologies provided by Windows Azure. In this way, besides the hardware cost reduction, it’s possible to benefit from the usage of a reliable, performing and elastic delivery platform.
Why Windows Azure?
For a company that operates in the digital signage market, it is quite common to have a network extended over several regions or countries. The territorial diversity implies a differentiated content management, an adequate and homogeneous performance level, even in the case of trans-national networks.
The hierarchic player management, grouped per location, group, service and area, allows to manage visibility, user and content distribution criteria in a natural and intuitive way. With the usage of Windows Azure, it is possible to distribute content in an efficient way, regardless from the country where the players are installed.
Web Signage and Windows Azure
The Web Signage solution consists of two main components: Web Signage Server Platform and Web
Signage Player.
Web Signage Server Platform is a web application that provides the tools to control the display network,
create content and manage its distribution. The decision to provide a web-based environment, avoiding the
installation of a client software, makes each upgrade easier and immediate, providing customers with the
freedom to manage the network and the content from any computer.
The Web Application is executed utilizing Web Roles on Windows Azure, that integrate the business logic and the services (Player Communication Interface and Open Communication Interface). The Player Communication Interface is the interface, created through the web services SOAP XML, that allows the management and the configuration of the players and the synchronisation of the playlist. The Open Communication Interface, realized through the WCF services, is a public interface that enables third party applications to exchange data with the Web Signage platform, create content and operate on advertising campaigns and playlists
Multimedia content, either uploaded or created with a guided procedure, is stored by the Windows Azure storage service. Based on the information received through the Player Communication Interface, the players synchronise the local playlist and then the local cache, by downloading the new content from the storage service. This can be done directly or, in case of trans-national networks, through the content delivery nodes.
The content’s metadata, the user’s credentials and the configurations are stored by utilizing a unique SQL Azure database for each client. The Web Signage platform is, for commercial and security reasons, single tenant. Every client has its own application instance and an isolated data and content repository.
