Ooh-tv exchanged with Tom Nix, the next CEO of Scala.

Tom, what made you the best candidate to take over as CEO of Scala?

I think I was chosen to be the next CEO of Scala because of my overall industry experience. I have worked with agencies, partner companies, other software companies, and kiosk companies. And that on an international basis, having collaborated with entities headquartered in the UK or in France.

Could you tell us more about the current situation of Scala?

Scala has the opportunity that the whole industry has: a tremendous growth occurring in the market. This growth is being driven by two main factors.

One is that very large companies are entering the market (Microsoft, HP, Intel, etc.), bringing new opportunities to our industry. Second is due to the dramatic decrease of hardware cost, more than 50% for some elements in the last few years.

We see Scala’s position as a global leader and innovator in the market place, taking advantage of this worldwide growth. We have more than 5,000 customers worldwide and a global footprint of 500+partners and 90 countries.

This network and the power coming from it– due to all our partners’ experience – allow us to address the needs of customers, whether they are large international companies or local entities.

What are your biggest territories in terms of sales?

We saw a tremendous growth for EMEA and USA, which are our two main territories.

In the mean time, as a more long term positioning, we have invested in the BRIC countries, where our brand is a strong asset. We opened an office in India this year, have had a presence in Brazil for three years, in China for four years and in Russia for many years.

And ROW is also growing.

What’s in your Roadmap for the coming months?

We will carry on integrating mobility with our solutions. But rather than providing one application for all purposes, we have taken a more holistic approach by delivering, for our clients, meaningful dedicated mobility solutions related to our signage platform.

We started this approach last year and we see a big opportunity for us in the two to three years coming.

Our second focus is on Dynamic Data. More and more customers are trying to leverage existing data within their environment (data from a POS system, Salesforce.com data, data from an ERP system, etc.) and display them dynamically. We are going to launch a new product, called CXO Board, which highlights the strength for automatic content creation.

The third focus – and this is something we are praised for by our customers – is keeping the stability of our platform. This might sound less “sexy” than the other points but this is very important.

Lastly, the Scala platform is incredibly versatile. We meet 95% of most customers needs right out of the box and for the rest it is easily customizable for other special requirement users may have.

What about standardisation? What does Scala to promote it ?

We fully understand the need of standardisation. POPAI USA started a committee about it and Scala, via Jeff Porter, our Vice President, is represented. It is still a work in progress.

A last question about consolidation – Do you plan any acquisitions?

We are always open to understanding how to bring new innovations and help our customers and our partners to get the full potential of the Scala platform. So we are open to anything that might help us to accomplish that mission.