Hosted by DataVisual, this webinar presentation explores how the Amazon Signage Stick + Carousel Digital Signage combine to deliver an affordable, enterprise-ready digital signage ecosystem.
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Good morning, afternoon, everyone. On behalf of Data Visual, welcome to Digital Signage Made Simple, Reliable, and Scalable with Amazon Signage and Carousel. I'd like to introduce our speakers today, York Kislitsch Lemire, COO VP of Sales Data Visual Alex Gu, Executive Business Development Manager, Amazon Signage and Cullen Gross, Sales Engineer, Carousel. They'll be guiding us through today's presentation.
Before we get started, if you have any questions, please do use the Q and A box at the bottom of your screen. It may be in your more section. Please do not use the chat. Please use the Q and A box for your questions. We'll answer as many questions as possible during the q and a at the end of the presentation. If we don't get to your questions, someone will someone from our team will follow-up with you afterwards. And with that, over to you, York.
Yeah. I just wanna give a quick thank you to Alex and Colin for taking the time to prepare for this and to present today. And thank you so much.
Cool. Well, thank you, York. I appreciate it. And thanks again for the data visual team for having us here.
I'm Alex. I've been with Amazon for over ten years, and I had the pleasure of helping the company launch multiple projects and business ventures. The most recent one being Amazon signage, which is our Amazon's foray into the digital signage market and supporting the customer base there.
So Amazon's journey into digital signage actually started from the customer lens. So in twenty twenty two, we were tasked with a project where we wanted to retrofit all of Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, which is our physical grocery stores, communication with customers. What that meant was actually building out digital signage infrastructure in our in our grocery stores. And as we went on this journey, we found that we're not immune to the key challenges that face customers today when as it relates to digital signage. So first off, the thing that we found was digital signage equipment is super expensive. You're talking about thousands of dollars for commercial grade screens, then even more money for the media players. And even at Amazon's size, we didn't have the negotiating power to bring the cost low enough for it to make sense.
In addition to that, a lot of the custom solutions that we will find or even just general solutions that we will find, was not very friendly to the store managers. So, originally, when we were going down to this project, we kind of envision all of our store managers being able to actually manage the digital signage infrastructure in their own stores as opposed to needing hiring, other IT teams to kinda support this additional infrastructure that we're building out. And what we did find in the industry, though, is the hardware super complex to manage. So it almost warranted the need for new IT team to be staffed if we wanted to achieve the project that we wanna do.
And lastly, we we found that the devices were not easy to procure. We had to go through multiple channel partners to actually be able to get access to the devices. Sometimes pricing was not very, very clear. So it was really, really difficult to actually source these as well.
So overall, based on our initial research, we did determine that the upfront cost was gonna be too high if we wanted to leverage existing solutions. That being said, we we were relatively discouraged by this because we thought the use case was relatively simplistic. It's just a sign rotating the store with a content management system behind it. So we didn't wanna give up on this because we did believe in the modernization of our communication and the return on investment that that would yield. So we decided that we can make our own solution that's better than what's available in the market today.
And as we set out to design the solution, we wanted to make sure that we're creating something simple and reliable. And in turn, that'll be extremely cost effective because it will allow us as a customer to maximize our own return on investment as we revamp our signage infrastructure. But at the same time, we also wanted to make sure that the product that we create or the solution that we create is extremely scalable. Even though we didn't have plans to take it to the external markets at this time yet, we did know internally at Amazon, there's a lot of different use cases where digital signage pops up. So for example, in our corporate offices, there's a lot of employee communications. In our warehouses, there's also associate communications as well. So we wanna make sure whatever solution we ultimately design for our Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh stores can also be leveraged by all of the other teams that would need it at Amazon.
So in twenty twenty three, we created the Amazon signage stick, for internal use cases only. It's a purpose built digital signage media player. We're able to leverage a lot of the experience that we have from making hardware for consumers, but make it more robust for a commercial application. So we're able to leverage decades of experience from hardware manufacturing design standpoint. And in addition to that, we're able to leverage a lot of the manufacturing infrastructure that we already had to keep the cost low.
So by the end of, by early twenty twenty four, we're able to retrofit all of our Whole Foods stores, Amazon Fresh stores with the first generation of Amazon signage sticks. So you're talking about thousands upon thousands of devices rolled across hundreds of different locations, all of which are managed by local teams with no additional IT staffs needed to be hired. So at this point, within our deployment, we started to kinda think that we could take the solution to the markets as well because we're already out of scale where we feel confident that we would be able to support external customers with this particular solution set. So we did launch the second generation of the Cynostick to the external markets, starting with the US in late twenty twenty four.
And as we bought it to the external market, we wanna lean into things a bit further that we knew customers needed and kind of what we really anchored on earlier is the principles of what we want to design, something simple simplistic but reliable.
So we made sure that the setup process is seamless. It's an extremely straightforward setup process that was inspired by some of our consumer setup experiences that we already had existing as well. So in this way, somebody without IT experience can actually set it up themselves. But there's also additional features from a setup perspective where if your IT team needed to set up a hundred or two hundred devices at once, there's both provisioning capabilities built in. So there's multiple different setup methodologies, none of which actually need a ton of IT experience or IT support to to execute.
The other thing is we wanna make sure we're software agnostic. We wanna make sure for our customers, it was easy to switch or upgrade their software or extend the existing life cycle of their existing hardware so without needing to invest too much into new infrastructure. So this creates options for our for our customers and puts more power in their hands to decide the right solution for them.
And then they don't have to think about the complexities of actually doing a full infrastructure refresh. So today, we have about seventy five partners available on the device, and some of them are the top partners like Carousel, who you'll learn more more about in a second.
Another thing that we wanted to make sure that we're doing is some of the internal applications that we created to make the device easier to manage and easier to set up was also available to external customers. So the device does come with a free companion application that lets you set up the device on your mobile phone or your desktop, but it also allows you to manage it too. So for example, you could do remote restarts. You can kind of reset it if you needed to. So this means if you're doing decentralized structure, you don't have to send somebody physically out there to actually manage your infrastructure, and this allows you to troubleshoot devices a bit easier.
And, again, all of this comes free for the customer.
Another thing we wanted to make sure that we're investing in heavily is letting our software partners actually make things better for our collective customer base. So what this means is that we for the first time, Amazon has enabled APIs for the hardware that our software partners can actually connect into. So this allows the software partners to create controls within their applications, so the customer doesn't have to hop between two different portals, Go into the Amazon portal, control the device, and then back to the CMS portal to control the content. This allow the all of the controls to be maintained within the, content management software's portal. So you can manage your content and your devices all in one spot, and this has allowed very innovative and creative partners like Carousel to take advantage of this, to actually bring forward more value to the to the joint customer basis for their digital signage use cases.
So the device is available now from Data Visual Partners, and it will be available directly on Amazon dot com and Amazon Business later this fall. But, you can also get it through all Data Visual Partners.
So since the launch of this product in late twenty twenty four externally, we have the honor of serving over ten thousand businesses in the US today across various different use cases ranging from one or two screens for a sole proprietorship or even tens of thousands of screens for enterprise customer like Amazon. So we've served multiple different use cases there.
And, also, the simplicity and the scalability allows us to support almost every use case within every single vertical. So we currently support seventeen different verticals, but the four that you're seeing on the screen currently is the ones that is most heavily penetrated.
But overall, we've been happy that we've allowed our customers to be able to deploy signage at a much more affordable rate and have much more reliable infrastructure through the product that we're able to create through our own pain points.
And lastly, this is just a real world example of how the signage stick is being utilized in the field today. So we have a lot more of these online too that we can share with the customer base here. If you guys want some sort of infrastructure, some inspiration on how digital signage is being leveraged across different business types and things like that, we'd be happy to share those.
So now I'll pass it on to Cullen from Carousel. And I mentioned as I mentioned earlier, Carousel is one of our most innovative partners, and they're the partner we regularly recommend for any customers that's looking to scale.
Thank you so much, Alex. Just a little mini introduction of myself. I'm Colin. I'm the sales engineer over here at Carousel.
We have been in the digital signage CMS game for almost thirty years, for just a few months shy of thirty years. So we've we've been around since, you know, really, digital signage was a a as a concept. Right? But I think that as time evolves and we've seen things change, right, it's become more important, like Alex mentioned, to have options, right, from a CMS perspective or hardware perspective.
But especially when those two meet in a partnership, it becomes really effective. Right? So this image on the right really illustrates, like, what it looks like from a user perspective. Right?
You have the CMS software you're logging in to to create your content.
You have the Amazon Shine Stick connected to your display, and you're displaying that content. Right? Together, this kind of partnership really needs to be, seen as more than just a checkbox. Right?
Like, this stuff doesn't just work. It works with intent, and that intent comes from our engineers working together to create something that is simple, scalable, and cost effective at scale. I think that we'll kinda dive into more of that. But wanna kinda point out that this isn't just like these two things work together.
These two things work with intent.
Now when we talk about the outcome of that intent, right, it really produces a simplified way to administer not just the device but the content as well. From the IT perspective, like that ten minute setup on the signage stick, right, that management console, that device provisioning, right, really makes the setup time significantly shorter than kinda legacy solutions that are out there.
Being able to add single sign on and do more granular roles means from an IT perspective, you still have this control, but you can hand it off to kinda regular users to kinda modify and manage that screen.
Now that integration between, Carousel and the Amazon Signer Stick is native. Right? We're not just an app that happens to function on that device. We're an app that can actually reach into that device and do things that you could only usually see at a much, you know, more expensive, you know, hardware solution, being able to turn the screen off, being able to see the status. And I think that being able to kind of do all that, like, at a very cost effective price point, has real outcomes for real customers.
And being able to just see what's online, see what's offline, to know what happens when there's a problem, or to update you to devices remotely, these are things that we've seen, still be an issue today and even well into the twenty twenties.
Now beyond sort of that partnership, it's also important to kinda consider, like, we're kind of still well into the sort of cloud, you know, SaaS model of of systems. Right? And those have benefits in their own ways, but I think the big thing we're in the generation where we're we're past the trust but verify stage. We're, like, in the verify stage.
Right? How do we know from an IT perspective that our data that we're putting up there, which might be something as simple as what your hours are to something extremely important and internal, like, what are my internal dashboards? Right? How are we securing those things, and how are you owning those things?
And for our Canadian customers, we do have a dedicated instance in AWS so that that data resides inside of Canada. Right? Or sorry. Inside, yeah, inside of Canada.
So the AWS instance in Canada is where your data is gonna live. That's gonna help you sort of adhere to local laws and local rules, and then also makes you the ability to review our, like, SOC two type two and make sure that this data, regardless of its importance, is being handled correctly.
It all kinda comes together, right, between the security, the simplicity, the reliability, scalability. It just comes out as being a way to manage your communication strategy on a few screens or a lot of screens. But as you scale that number up, it does not involve or introduce more complexity.
And then that outcome comes with real results. Right? You know, we can kind of manage content in any industry because every single industry has communication needs. Like, we take break rooms, for example. That's a real example of our theme of scale, right, where we can have one break room in this one location, have information that's corporate wide, but also important for those employees at that location or even the employee at that shift. Right? Being able to move to, like, a higher ed situation, this really comes into reliability, right, to make sure that as prospective students and active students are at campus, they can know where they are, what's happening, what are the events, right, and being able to produce emergency alerts in a way that is reliable sort of feeds to that industry as well.
Healthcare and clinics really, like, lead to that idea of simplicity, right, where maybe there won't be a lot of updates. There might not be a lot of changes, or those individual sites might not necessarily have their own content, but the way to kind of automate a lot of these messages. So someone walks into a clinic. They see the screen.
It's usually the same content all the time. But for them, it's the first time being in this space, having that knowledge, being informed. Right? That kind of that simplicity sort of improves the, like, customer experience.
And then corporate environments have all of these scale, reliability, and simplicity. Right? We need to be able to get to multiple locations internationally, right, not just within Canada. We need to be able to have corporate and local stuff, and we need to make sure that that is nice and secure. And I think that what's important here is the partnership not just between Amazon and Carousel, like, makes that output happen, but also a partnership with Datavigil to make sure that your project can be scoped in the right way and, you know, head in the right direction. I think that all three of us together have the outcome of it working, but it doesn't just work. It works with intent between our three organizations.
I think with that, I'll hand it off to, York to, bring us to our next section.
Perfect. Thanks, Colin. Yeah. I I think the big theme today is really around simplicity. Right? Amazon providing simple hardware. Carousel's giving a really simple experience for creating content and sharing the content, and then simpler ongoing management for your team.
And if you're doing a small project, you know, five to ten rooms, or if you're doing, you know, hundreds of rooms across campuses, these solutions make that whole process a lot easier, removing a lot of the friction of some of the more traditional systems, and makes science projects just simpler across the board. And to recap why it actually matters to you, it really is affordability at scale. Right? You're getting purpose built commercial grade hardware at a price point that really fits most budgets.
The second big thing is Canadian data. As a Canadian, I know how much it matters to me that all of our data lives in Canada. Nothing's getting accessed remotely as policies change. So having data sovereignty is really key, and having that in AWS instance really helps.
And then the last one that we see all the time is just the time to deploy because, again, you're managing so many different things on any big project, and being able to know that you can get hardware quickly, deploy it quickly, commission it quickly is really, really essential, especially with some of the tight timelines we're on.
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