By Sanjay Manandhar

Pay up front or pay as you go? Sometimes you get a choice, and with digital signage this choice can make the difference between success or a failed business. A decade ago someone who wanted to run a signage network would license the software with an up-front payment for the first year’s usage for their signs, buys servers and media player hardware. This was often no small payment. More recently, Software-as-a-Service (Saas) is a different business model that is more practical for many businesses.

So what problems does Saas avoid or solve? The first is ‘the IT problem’, and the second is the ‘Capex problem’.

These problems were brought into focus for us a few years back. During a ‘site visit’ to see how the young patrons entertained themselves at a club in Waterford Ireland (where the fancy crystalware is made). A chance meeting in with the owner inspired us to include the SaaS model of digital signage and mobile interactivity software delivery.

As many clubs do, this one featured very loud popular music, with lots of LCD displays everywhere showing trance-like imagery on some and sports on others. When it was time to talk about digital signage and software license pricing, the owner asked, “What license fee? We pay for everything outright if we use it on premises. If it is delivered from afar, like electricity, cable, phone, we pay monthly.” That comment was instrumental in shifting Aerva from a traditional software licensing model with customer-hosted servers to a more flexible model for increasingly larger numbers of customers.

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