Scala is a producer of multimedia software. It was founded in 1987 as a
Norwegian company called Digital Visjon. It is headquartered near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia.
History
In 1987 a young Norwegian entrepreneur, Jon Bøhmer founded the company "Digital Visjon" in
Brumunddal
Brumunddal is a town in Ringsaker Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The town is the administrative centre of the municipality. It is located on the shores of the lake Mjøsa, about north of the town of Hamar. The town is a small, densely ...
, Norway to create multimedia software on the
Commodore Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
computer platform. In 1988 they released their first product which was named InfoChannel 0.97L, which had hotels and cable TV companies as their first customers.
In 1990, they redesigned the program with a new
graphical user interface. They renamed the company and the software "Scala" and released a number of multimedia applications. The company attracted investors, mainly from Norway and incorporated in the
US in 1994 and is now based in the United States with their
European headquarters located in the
Netherlands.
The name "Scala" was given by Bøhmer and designer Bjørn Rybakken and represents the scales in colors, tones and the
opera in Milan. The name inspired a live actor animation made by Bøhmer and Rybakken using an Amiga, a
video camera and a frame-by-frame video
digitizer
DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer-r ...
. The animation, named "Lo scalatore" (
Italian for 'The Climber'), featured a magic trick of
Indian
fakirs of a man climbing a ladder and disappearing in the air. This animation was then included into one of the Demo Disks of Scala Multimedia in order to show the capabilities of that presentation software in loading and playing animations whilst also manipulating it with other features of the software.
In 1994 Scala released Multimedia MM400 and InfoChannel 500.
In 1996, due to the bankruptcy of Commodore, Scala left the Amiga platform and started delivering the same applications under MS-DOS. Scala Multimedia MM100, Scala Multimedia Publisher and Scala InfoChannel 100 were released for the x86 platform. Scala MM100 won Byte Magazine's "Best of Comdex" in 1996.
Corporate governance
As of December 2013, the
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of Scala is
Tom Nix, who was formerly a regional vice president.
Nix succeeds
Gerard Bucas, who retired after nine years.
[
]
Scala Multimedia
The first versions for the Amiga computer were a video titler and slide show authoring system. Scala was bundled with typefaces, background images, and a selection of transition effects to be applied to them. The artwork was designed by Bjørn Rybakken. Scala was also capable of working with Genlock equipment to superimpose titles over footage played through the devices video input.
Succeeding versions of the program on the same platform added features such as animation playback, more effects ("Wipes") and the ability to interact with multimedia devices through a programming language called "Lingua" (Latin for "language").
With its move to Windows, Scala became more complex and gained the ability to support languages such as Python and Visual Basic.
Scala5
In late 2008, Scala stopped calling their product line InfoChannel and went through a period of referring only to their "solutions". At the start of 2009, the product line was being called 'Scala5' and being referred to as such in all their press releases.
Scala5 has three main components: Scala Designer, an authoring program which is used to create dynamic content, Scala Content Manager, which is used to manage and distribute content, and Scala Player, which plays back the distributed content.
Scala Enterprise
Scala's latest suite of Digital signage
Digital signage is a segment of electronic signage. Digital displays use technologies such as LCD, LED, projection and e-paper to display digital images, video, web pages, weather data, restaurant menus, or text. They can be found in public ...
software is referred to as Scala Enterprise. The solution, a software suite consisting of Scala Designer, Scala Player, and Scala Content Manager officially launched in mid- 2013.
At launch, release version 10.0 featured HTML5 and Android
Android may refer to:
Science and technology
* Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human
* Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system
** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...
player support, the usage of interactive features on mobile devices to engage with retail and corporate communications audiences, and social media integrations.
As of April 2018, the latest version of Scala Enterprise is version 11.05.
References
External links
* {{official, www.scala.com
Original animation of "LoScalatore" and other Scala demos
preserved for historical purposes on randelshofer.ch site
Scala's Trade Mark 'InfoChannel' (CTM 301275) has been cancelled by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market
1987 establishments in Norway
Norwegian companies established in 1987
Companies based in Pennsylvania
Presentation software
Amiga software
Software companies of the United States
Signage