Black Box
Lawrence, PA 15055-1018
United States
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, October 7, 2010 - Black Box Corporation (NASDAQ:BBOX), an industry-leading provider of voice communications, data infrastructure, and networking products announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) has awarded the Black Box® iCOMPEL™ digital signage player platform its 2009 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award.<br><br>
The Norwalk, Connecticut-based TMC presents the award to businesses that have shown "vision, leadership, and thoroughness." It was the second straight year that Black Box and its iCOMPEL have received the TMC award.<br><br>
"Black Box has been recognized with a 2009 Product of the Year Award for their admirable efforts in the advancement of data and video communications," said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. "The iCOMPEL has shown benefits for its customers and provides ROI for the companies that use it. Congratulations to the entire team at Black Box. I look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the coming year."<br><br>
The iCOMPEL family of browser-based, networked players gives businesses and organizations of any size an affordable solution for improving internal and external communications through relevant, dynamic digital signage. With it, users can stream recorded or live video, Flash animation, and RSS news and stock ticker feeds, and other Web media.<br><br>
"Black Box is honored to be recognized with this award," said Brian Kutchma, Black Box Director of Marketing. "TMC has taken notice of what others in the industry already know: that the iCOMPEL is an ideal communications solution for simple, affordable deployment of attention-getting digital signage. Because it’s an integrated hardware/software solution with free updates and no ongoing fees, customers can get their signage up and running fast and expect a much lower cost of ownership than similar products on the market," Kutchma said.<br><br>
As an "out-of-the-box" solution, iCOMPEL comes preloaded with software for assembling and distributing HD-quality multimedia content to digital signs. It includes drag-and-drop tools for playing of stored and live media in multiple screen zones, and menus for scheduling content distribution by time and location. There are no software as a service (SaaS) fees.<br><br>
"Digital signage can potentially be a very expensive initial and ongoing investment and, because of its complexity, it can be difficult to integrate into an existing network," Kutchma explained. "But our strategy with iCOMPEL was to make it an affordable, easy-to-integrate solution that’s also scalable, so a business can start with one screen in one location and expand to many screens in many locations."