Shane Vega, Userful

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Using existing network infrastructure has long been talked up as an efficient way to manage and deliver digital signage solutions in large companies, but the concept has been clouded by concerns - like the cost of additional AV hardware and the impact of all that video on the company network. But we now live in a world where companies support countless video conferencing sessions with piles of users, with little or no latency. Other technologies have also caught up, and computing just keeps getting more powerful. Which is why I was interested in chatting with Shane Vega, VP of Marketing for the Silicon Valley software firm Userful, about his company's AV over IP solutions. The company has its roots in Calgary, Alberta and still does a lot of the R&D work there. Userful first showed up in digital signage circles talking about a different way, using software and endpoints, to drive video walls. But in the last few years it has been much more focused on a broader IP-driven solution that tends to start with control rooms and operations centers, but can also drive things like meeting room displays and digital signage around corporate campuses. There's been a lot of discussion about AV needs converging with IT interests, but from Vega's perspective, that convergence is already firmly in place. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Shane, thank you for joining me. Where are you today?  Shane Vega: I am in sunny Tampa, Florida, where although it's not all that sunny today, we've got some rain, but that's per the norm now.  Now, Userful is in Silicon Valley, but a lot of the developers are in Calgary, right? Shane Vega: Yeah, that's correct. All of our R&D, engineering team, and the like, they're all up in Calgary, Canada. So you're missing the Calgary Stampede this week?  Shane Vega: I am missing the Stampede.  But you know what, I believe they deserve a bit of some good time because they spend the majority of the time avoiding the minus 30-degree weather.  Yeah, I spent a number of years in Calgary, and it's an interesting weather city. Shane Vega: Yeah. You know it's bad when they've developed an entire infrastructure of walkways between buildings to avoid having to go outside.  Yeah, just like Minneapolis.  Shane Vega: Exactly.  All right, so we had a quick chat in the LG booth at Infocomm, and you explained what Userful was up to with its Infinity platform and AV over IP and AV as a Service and so on, and I've seen that. I will wholeheartedly admit I don't totally get it, but how you explained it to me was very interesting, and I thought this would be useful for a lot of people to understand the infrastructure and distribution side of digital signage.  We spend so much time talking about the content and business strategy and all those sorts of things, but behind-the-scenes stuff is awfully important, and maybe we could start out by just explaining what Userful is and does and where you came from because when Userful first came out, it was presented to me as video wall software, and I had a hell of a time wrapping my brain around what it was all about. But I know you guys have evolved quite a bit.  Shane Vega: Yeah. I appreciate that, Dave. To answer your question, Userful has grown exponentially in the last 5+ years. John Marshall, our CEO came on board about 7 years or so ago. My timing might be a little bit off, and when he came into the organization, we were a perpetual software company, so we weren't software as a service, we weren't selling subscriptions. We were selling perpetual software… You'd buy a license and then get that supported?  Shane Vega: Yeah, you'd buy a license then we support it for the duration of however long you wanted to use it, and the license for the software was pretty siloed, right? It was, “Hey, you can buy this operations center license.” Where, to your point, we were just managing conten