Why Build when you can Buy? Why Buy when you can Rent?

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

BroadSign 6.0 Press Release

BroadSign have announced the upgrade of their customer base to a new version of their software offering – press release attached.

I often say to screen network owners and corporates alike when they are looking around at digital signage / CMS solutions “Why Build when you can Buy? Why Buy when you can Rent?”

We are lucky now in this industry vertical sector to have several really good signage solutions. Unless you have a really good reason to build your own solution it is really not necessary.

One of the washroom advertising solutions I have seen in Europe, built their own, it’s pretty simple and serves a purpose but just because of the sheer number of screens that they were talking about they built their own to avoid huge software licensing costs.

I am a big fan of the ASP (application service provider) model – now more often referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS).

First it’s great when you see here with Broadsign that they have a SaaS offering and second it’s great that they can see the benefits of (a) doing it and (b) promoting it (clearly as SaaS).

Our industry needs to adopt a lot of the best models from Web 2.0 and SaaS is one of them.

Software should be a utility, a ‘service’ as the buzzword says. Not something you should have to worry about unduly – renting it can be a good option.

I will be off too Geneva soon, as a guest of Neo Advertising and it will be interesting to see it in action (POSTV in the Netherlands is the other BIG Broadsign reference customer in Europe).


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