New Alcatraz Pro - your cloud service for inext devices management

Alcatraz Pro — a natural successor of the Alcatraz cloud service

In the second article of our solutions section, we would like to introduce you to the Alcatraz Pro cloud service, which will become a reliable partner for every telecom operator that chooses inext set-top boxes.

For inext, the idea of remote control of set-top boxes in the network is not new: for 9 years our clients have been enjoying the convenient functionality of the Alcatraz system, which currently covers hundreds of thousands of devices from more than one hundred and fifty operators.

Alcatraz is a SaaS virtual device management system designed to monitor and control STBs in a specific network. With its help, operators can, among other things, remotely block a device manually or automatically.

Alcatraz Pro significantly expands the functionality of its predecessor, first of all by allowing the operator to send push notifications to set-top boxes, which greatly simplifies and optimizes communication with the end user. Such notifications can be sent to all devices on the network or to selected categories — for example, sorted by firmware version.

For convenience, a feature has also been added that lets you create push notifications and send them out immediately, or schedule them by specifying both the start and end dates of the campaign.

An important point inherited from Alcatraz is the very simple and intuitive control panel — the operator can still immediately see the device model, MAC address, serial number, software version, IP address, and the time the device was last online.

However, the Pro version opens up a completely new level of information about the end user's device.

With Alcatraz Pro, the operator has access to the following parameters:

Device activation date;

Language;

Android version;

Type of connection to TV and Wi-Fi;

Connection level;

Installed applications;

Device temperature;

Amount of free memory.

With the new search capabilities, the operator can now find devices by model, firmware version, MAC address, IP address, and even a comment on a specific device, which saves time and resources in everyday use.

Another interesting capability of the Pro version is checking network bandwidth using iPerf3 (testing the network connection with a choice of direction and TCP/UDP traffic type), which provides detailed results by time, data volume, or number of packets in just a few clicks.

In conclusion, Alcatraz Pro also significantly expands the range of commands that can be applied to an inext set-top box: taking a screenshot, sending a remote control command to the device, rebooting the device, returning it to factory settings, enabling/disabling automatic firmware updates (full or phased rollout with testing on a limited group of devices), and refreshing device data (for example, temperature).

Alcatraz Pro is an innovative solution for managing Android boxes that significantly improves functionality and usability compared to the previous version. We are confident it will become a convenient everyday tool for all our partners and let them focus their time and effort on improving their own technology. After all, we know that this is why they choose inext!

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