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Home / Company / News Archive / Worldwide Internet Kiosk Browser Analysis 2005

Analysis conducted by Eckhard Reimann

Worldwide Internet Kiosk Browser Analysis identifies the 'Sitekiosk' kiosk software as a leading and comprehensive software solution for public access computers and Internet terminals.

Personal computers usually belong to their users and provide them with access to all functions and applications. However, at public access (Internet) terminals users will only have access to contents the operator of the terminal wants them to access. All other functions and applications will be restricted. In addition, the terminal operators may want the kiosk run for a long time without any human intervention, which would require a software providing a high level of security as well as extensive control management.

In an effort to protect their kiosk terminals against manipulation by the users, a lot of providers have developed specific kiosk browser software products. Forty-four providers of these software products for public access computers and Internet terminals have been asked for information about functionality, price structure, installations and awards for their products during the year 2004 – they are

15 companies from the USA

10 companies from Germany

7 companies from Canada

5 companies from UK

2 companies from Scandiavia

and 1 company each from Australia, Lithuania, Austria, Slovenia, and South Korea

With a return rate of about 70 percent, participation in this survey was extremely high. The software products of the companies who did not respond to our request were included in the analysis by means of the information provided on the companies' websites.

The target of the analysis was to provide decision makers with an overview of all kiosk browser products available in the marketplace and to score them by their functionality, price, service, and popularity. Forty-four providers of relevant kiosk software products have been asked, 14 of them have not been considered due to the following criteria for participation or due to missing information.

The following criteria had to be met by the providers and their products:

1st Kiosk Browser Product

The software product has to be a real kiosk browser. The main prerequisite is that the software can display Internet contents or webSites and has been developed mainly to be used on public access computers and kiosk terminals. The software also ensures that a user cannot manipulate the computer.

2nd Enhancements to the Software (up-to-date version)

For long-term projects it is necessary for software developers to react to new market environments. Therefore, products that have not been actively developed for an extended period of time (last release version is older than 1 year) were not considered.

3rd English language version

Products not available in the English language were not considered.

4th Software Development

Companies were not considered unless they developed the listed software products in their own company. Example: The products "i-Table", "Surf-Timer", and "Webfinancer" are quite the same product as the one marketed by Kiosk Logix under the brand name "Netstop PRO".

Selecting the evaluation criteria including the assignment of points always represents a difficult task when performing a study. The criteria must always be objectively comprehensible to everyone and must not be based on mere personal taste. Therefore, subjective criteria, e.g. the appearance of the user interface, the product design, and general impressions of the software were consciously excluded from this study. Apart from the product and its popularity, the service offered by the product providers was examined as well.

1st Software

After sifting through the different products, we adopted the function / features most frequently mentioned by all providers as our evaluation criteria. Additional points were rewarded for the provision of a test version, as running tests before employing the software will considerably reduce the risk of buying the wrong product.

2nd Costs

For the sake of simplicity, this column only considers the license cost for 1 software unit.

3rd Popularity

A product honored with awards and several thousand installations has obviously managed to prove itself on the market, which to potential decision-maker, means a higher level of investment security in selecting a particular product.

4th Service

We examined how quickly the company reacted to requests for information and how it helped their customers to solve their problems both online and offline.

Ranking: Winner of the Analysis:

Based on the points rewarded to the analyzed products, we determined the following ranking after evaluating the products´ performance:

1st Product: SiteKiosk 6.0

Provider: PROVISIO, LLC, USA / PROVISIO GmbH, Germany
Points: 28

The analysis proves that Sitekiosk stands out as the most extensive software solution for public access computers and Internet terminals. The product SiteKiosk has been consistently developed and enhanced by PROVISIO since 1997. What is more, its exceptional security concept of the software makes user manipulation under Win2K/XP almost impossible. SiteKiosk’s extensive remote maintenance capabilities complete the concept. With more than 70,000 installations, Sitekiosk is also the most popular kiosk browser solution.