Article

Remote management roundup, part 1

In this first part of a series on remote management software, we give an overview of how remote management can help the kiosk industry.

March 24, 2002

"No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote John Donne 400 years ago, and no kiosk should be either.

Halldor Sigurjonsson, chief technology officer for kiosk management software maker Degasoft, said that five years ago most kiosk deployments were isolated islands that didn't have remote management capabilities. The lack of centralized management for kiosk systems and tools hampered the kiosk industry because large deployments of kiosks were difficult.

Systems were maintained manually. This is known in networking as a "sneakernet," because, in theory, people don sneakers and run from machine to machine.

It's still happening. KitchenAid recently deployed new kiosks in such far-flung areas as Broomfield, Colo.; Springdale, Ohio; Chino Hills, Calif.; Irving, Calif.; Chandler, Ariz.; Novi, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Willowbrook, Texas; Town/Country, Texas and Schaumburg, Ill., according to a recent KIOSKmarketplace article.

Each machine will be updated by swapping hard drives, said Michelle Zendah, marketing coordinator at Centerville, Ohio-based Cloonan and Associates, designers of the kiosks. According to Zendah, KitchenAid didn't want the system networked.

As the KitchenAid kiosks make clear, there are still kiosk systems not using remote management software. In order for kiosks to become more practical, and to make large networks possible, deployers must consider remote management. Kiosk systems are too complicated to maintain otherwise.

Penny Crump, communications manager for Netkey, maker of Netkey Manager, agreed. "As the pace of kiosk technology increases, people need to be able to deploy (content) on a wide range of kiosks. With mass deployments of Web-enabled kiosks you need something to control them all from one location."

Networked together, every kiosk, as Donne said of every human being, "is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

What's in it for you

Remote management gives kiosk managers the ability to:

• Install and upgrade software
• Change content
• Monitor the status of a kiosk
• Recover from errors
• View statistics that help judge the success of a kiosk application
• Add and schedule advertising
• Secure the kiosk so that users can't get to the operating system running behind the kiosk application and make changes

Most remote management systems offer most of the above features. A powerful system will allow kiosks to be grouped together in different ways. For example, a retailer can group

Check our glossaries For an overview of software terms, see "A kiosk software glossary." For an overview of networking terms, see "An ATM connectivity glossary."

kiosks by region in order to run a specific promotion, ad, application and Web page on those kiosks. Or, one kiosk can be modified to test an application without affecting the others. Then the retailer can view statistics showing the success of each promotion on each kiosk, or among a group.

The price ain't right

Other enterprise software, such as Unicenter by Computer Associates International Inc. and Tivoli, by Tivoli Systems Inc., can provide many of the functions kiosk operators need. But these products, made for large enterprises, are too costly to use just for kiosks.

Mike Letellier, a call center representative in Computer Associates' marketing department, said that Unicenter costs from $500,000 to millions, depending on what options an enterprise wants. Unicenter is designed for huge enterprises of 10,000 or more computers, Letellier said.

According to Terry Burba, marketing manager for Tivoli, $500,000 would be a reasonable entry-level amount for a company to spend. Tivoli is designed for enterprises of from 1,500 to 150,000 computers and beyond, Burba said.

Companies with kiosk networks in the hundreds may find this a tad pricey.

Jim Decker, head of presales for Netkey, said that the cost of these systems leaves an opening in the market that kiosk software companies can fill.

Burba noted, however, that if a company had already invested in Tivoli, and was setting up a kiosk network of 500 kiosks, more licenses for management components could be added for a much lower cost.

"To add the kiosk management systems is very likely in the $50,000 to $60,000 range," he said.

Neither Netkey, or NetNearU, maker of TRACKOS, would divulge their software prices and leasing fees, but based on Degasoft's figures, the price of adding kiosks to a pre-existing Tivoli system seems reasonable, assuming there are no other, hidden costs.

A single license for Kudos Enterprise costs $15,000 for a system with up to 1,000 kiosks (each kiosk is called a client). In addition, each client costs $395. Based on these fees, a 200-kiosk deployment created and managed on the Kudos Enterprise server product would cost $94,000. Degasoft also includes a program for creating kiosk applications, called Kudos Designer.

Kudos enterprise includes five modules: Kudos Runtime, which runs on each kiosk; Kudos Designer, a tool for creating kiosk applications; Kudos Distributor, which stores content and targets it to the kiosks; Kudos Observer, which monitors the machines; and Kudos Analyzer, which gathers statistics and produces reports.

Alternatively, businesses can purchase only the Kudos Runtime client software for $120 per machine. Licenses also include Kudos Designer. They can also buy any number of modules they need, Sigurjonsson said.

Different products, different business models

Bluepoint Technologies Inc. uses a different approach for its remote management services. Brian Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing for Bluepoint, said that customers pay a monthly subscription fee to use any combination of three modules, LinkWatch, DisplayLink, and KioskLink.

Its system is designed to manage interactive Web kiosks, Peterson said. Web sites are not hosted at Bluepoint. Rather, Bluepoint hosts the management, which includes reporting, monitoring, and managing media files and advertisements. In addition, it provides tools to build a look and feel (called a "skin") around a company's Web application.

Customers subscribe to LinkWatch (which provides monitoring) and KioskLink (which runs the interface) together for $75 per month, or to LinkWatch and DisplayLink (which runs advertising) for $145 per month. In addition, customers pay a one time fee of $1,000 to set up the service.

Netkey and NetNearU both sell software licenses and lease space on their servers to manage the kiosks.

Servers are computers that manage network connections to all the kiosks. Servers run the kiosk management software, store the Web pages used by the kiosk application as well as all the files the kiosk needs to operate. These files are copied to the kiosk using remote management tools.

Using another company's servers takes the burden of network administration off of the business buying the kiosks.

"Our end users do not need to worry about maintaining servers. There are no end-user maintained servers - we maintain the entire back end," Peterson said.

On the other hand, retailers may prefer to run their servers and run their kiosks through their IT departments, Sigurjonsson said. These companies may not want proprietary applications being run on another firm's servers and they may feel that their servers are more secure, he said.

For companies projecting small kiosk deployments of less than a hundred to a few hundred machines, the additional cost of setting up servers and installing Microsoft SQL Server (a relational database required for Degasoft's Kudos Enterprise), may make the leasing option more attractive. But if companies have servers and networks already set up for point of sale and other retail systems, it may make more sense to incorporate kiosks into those systems.

Build it yourself?

While tools written specifically to manage kiosks have their place, many network administrators prefer familiar remote management tools that they use daily to manage their non-kiosk networks. For example, they may already use remote control software such as Netopia's Timbuktu or Symantec's pcAnywhere to run a remote computer from their desks.

Using remote control software, administrators can download and upload files, and do anything else someone sitting at a machine can do. First Wave Inc.,makers of the Kiosk Communicator design software, uses Timbuktu to manage the Petro truck stop loyalty program it designed, according to Kristi Tolman, First Wave's marketing director.

John Sheesley, editor of IT portal TechRepublic's Server and Netware Web sites, said tools like Microsoft's System Management Server (SMS) make it possible to distribute software. SMS offers the same level of control found in kiosk remote management packages. When used in conjunction with the features Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 already include, SMS can be a powerful solution, assuming that the kiosks are powered by Microsoft operating systems.

A check of operating system features of Windows 2000 and NT, two operating systems run on many kiosk systems, showed that they can use their Remote Installation Service to deploy software and a feature called Terminal Services to take control of desktops much as pcAnywhere does. In addition, Microsoft operating systems can track the status of computers. The tracking is easily customized, especially in Windows 2000.

Another Microsoft tool, the Windows Installer, can be used to repair damaged applications and revert to an earlier version of software if desired.

Using these features and bits and pieces of different utilities and applications, it's possible for a company to create remote management solutions. That's exactly what Ben Martinez did with Denver's Regional Transportation District kiosks. Martinez presented his remote management solution at April's KioskCom. The network of 37 kiosks, all Web-based, uses Microsoft SMS for basic management of the Factura machines, which run the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.

However, it takes a tech-savvy and experienced IT staff many development hours to set up remote management from different sources, and it may still lack some essential features.

"The standard management tools don't give you the ability to manage them (kiosks) very easily and don't give you the broad range of scheduling management updates," Decker said.

Cody Catalena, chief technology officer for NetNearU, agreed. "If you use multiple remote management packages you're going to end up with a quilt," he said.

Applications designed for kiosks don't have to be hard to learn. Kudos, for example, uses standard menus, icons and other graphical user interface components that network administrators will find familiar, according to Degasoft's Sigurjonsson.

"As we developed the tools we tried to use the standard metaphors which are used for other development tools and other network management tools," he said. "So if you're familiar with managing a network of Windows 2000 computers, you'll immediately realize how to navigate around in our enterprise management tools."

The days of sneakernets and hard drive swaps are numbered. Remote management is as essential to the future of kiosks as caffeine is to network administrators.