Danish School System Builds Agile, Responsive Remote IT Support Model on Black Box Emerald™ KVM Platform

Emerald-Enabled Support Booth Significantly Reduces IT Staff Travel Time While Maximizing Day-to-Day Tech Support Access for Students and Teachers

UTRECHT, Netherlands — April 2019 — Black Box, an industry-leading provider of pro AV connectivity and signal distribution systems, today announced that Helsingør Kommune, a community of 17 middle schools in and around the Danish city of Helsingør, is using the Emerald™ high-performance KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) platform to enable remote IT support and troubleshooting for students and teachers. The Emerald-enabled support booth gives students and teachers immediate access to the IT service desk throughout every school day and significantly improves the efficiency of the support team in addressing service requests.

The first Helsingør Kommune deployment, at Skolen ved Rønnebær Allé, relies on one Emerald transmitter and eight Emerald receiver devices to carry video and USB over IP between the middle school and remote IT department. Students initiate a support session through a SkyLink video call on an iPad within the booth. Once the student connects the problematic laptop or device into the Emerald-based solution via DVI or HDMI and USB, an IT staff member can assume control, launch a webcam chat session, and begin troubleshooting.

“It's probably one of the world's first IT solution that combines a phone box with online support for school students,” said Mads William Oehlenschlæger, tech support specialist at Helsingør Kommune. “The idea originated from Kim Baumgarten, IT manager at the Center for Citizens' Services, IT and Digitalization (BID) at Prøvestenen. And it actually works on several levels. For one, the problem often is that students can’t get their computers to connect to the internet. Using Emerald KVM extension for video and control, our team can quickly resolve that issue. We also wanted to establish personal contact with students, using the webcam so that they can see us, and we can see them. That’s really why we built our new IT support ‘box’ this way. Plus, students always love it when they see us ‘hacking’ their screens.”

The Emerald KVM platform from Black Box provides the high level of security essential to the education sector, as well as the point-to-multipoint extension functionality that makes it easy for the tech support team to control and fix laptops remotely. Rather than travel between schools on a preset schedule, support team members use the KVM platform to address issues wherever and whenever they arise. Integration of the award-winning Black Box Boxilla KVM management platform allows for straightforward network management via a user friendly, web-based GUI.

“It’s always exciting to see the power of our Emerald KVM platform demonstrated in an interesting new application,” said Josh Whitney, senior vice president of Technology Product Solutions at Black Box. “The Helsingør Kommune deployment is a great example of the significant benefits that our high-performance KVM solutions can bring in supporting remote access to critical technical resources.”

More information about the Black Box Emerald KVM platform is available at www.black-box.eu/Emerald. More information on Black Box and its products is available at www.blackbox.eu.

Company Overview

About Black Box

Black Box delivers award-winning products and services that simplify signal management and distribution in IT and communication systems. We engineer and manufacture KVM and audio/video systems that connect users with PCs and servers, desktops and peripherals, ensuring smart, flexible access to critical IT assets, data, and content. For government, education, and commercial organizations of all sizes, we design and supply secure infrastructure solutions for control rooms, conference and collaboration facilities, and digital signage. With four decades of experience, as well as a global presence and an extensive team of technical experts, we provide the products, solutions, service, and support that allow our clients to connect with their colleagues, their customers, and the world.

To learn more, visit the Black Box website at https://www.blackbox.eu/ and follow us on Twitter @BlackboxEMEA.

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