Building Canopy: From Kiosks to Connected Product Device Management

Over the past decade, connected products have become integral to our everyday lives — from self-service kiosks to access control systems to digital signage and more. We use them to buy groceries, pay for parking, get cash, access office spaces, play games, and secure our homes. 

We all seek things that make our lives easier, which is why connected technology isn’t just a trend anymore. It's how the world works. Every day even more connected products are born, from fresh-baked pizza vending machines to robot bartenders. What the future holds for connected products is anyone's guess, but what I know for certain is that Canopy is ready to manage those devices — this company's future has never been brighter.

But it wasn’t always this way, and to understand where we are going, I want to go back to the beginning.

A Vending Machine for DVDs

I started my work in the tech industry some 20 years ago. Back then, getting a DVD out of a kiosk was a brand new idea. As Redbox started gaining momentum, NCR asked me to build Blockbuster Express to compete.

Connected products were just getting started.

Building Blockbuster Express I witnessed firsthand how customers adapted to new technology — and how technology impacted the customer experience. I also saw firsthand how hard it is to manage a fleet of remote devices. In particular, I saw how operators had no good options for monitoring or managing all the components and characteristics of these complex devices.

From misconfigured settings to network connectivity problems, a lot can and will go wrong with connected products. All of it results in downtime. And without technical support nearby, downtime can lead to reputation-damaging interruptions, lost revenue, and costly resolution processes.  

Working on Blockbuster Express, I realized how connected product operators needed real-time insight into the performance of their products. They needed the ability to resolve problems when — or, ideally, before — they happened. That insight led to the beginning of Canopy, a remote device management platform that proactively resolves downtime for connected product fleets around the world.

Canopy is that vision coming to fruition. Here’s our story.

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The Big Idea: The Connected Product Problem

Canopy’s roots go back to my time at NCR Corporation, where I helped develop cross-industry-connected products like point-of-sale systems and unattended self-service terminals. During this time, I became interested in the intersection of technology and centralized remote service management, and I could see that connected products were the future of how customers would access services. 

My biggest project at NCR was to lead the development rollout of Blockbuster Express, a DVD rental kiosk business built to compete with Redbox. We aimed to deploy thousands of kiosks so customers nationwide could easily walk up and rent movies. Because owning and operating a business within NCR was such uncharted territory, we didn’t function like a typical business unit; we were an end-to-end tech startup within a corporation. We acquired several existing software, hardware, and operator companies to help launch the business.  

We quickly found that without a way to monitor the state of the product and manage that system remotely, the DVD kiosks simply wouldn’t work. For example, if the credit card reader was down, the machine had a jam, or the software application crashed, the store was closed. These issues could completely shut down all business for that specific kiosk. Real-time monitoring and management were essential to ensuring kiosks were open for business. 

To connect and control the Blockbuster Express kiosks, we created sophisticated software that could deeply integrate with every hardware and software component that made up the product. This level of visibility was essential to keeping everything up and running, but it was very hardwired into the components of a DVD rental kiosk. It got me thinking, “What if a software platform could connect similarly to any connected product, not just a DVD rental kiosk?” From there, the blueprint for Canopy was born: A platform that could centrally and remotely manage connected products, providing real-time visibility into every component of a product, combined with the power to control all the products in the fleet. 

The Idea Takes Shape: From DVD Kiosks to Banyan Hills 

At Blockbuster Express, we learned lesson after lesson about the complexities of remotely managing connected products. We learned that remotely monitoring and managing large networks of unattended products was not only essential; it was also hard! It takes a lot of smart software to integrate deeply with everything that makes up a product, like a DVD rental kiosk. We also learned that once connected, so much is possible. You can centrally observe and respond to data about the health of the technology, the key business metrics, and the customer experience. All this information enables the operator to devise network-wide observations that can lead to proactive and preventative service operations. 

Blockbuster Express grew from zero to 10,000 DVD kiosks deployed in the United States in just three years, ultimately leading to Redbox acquiring the Blockbuster Express business in 2012.

Not long after Blockbuster Express sold, I returned to the Canopy vision. It was clear to me that the future was a connected one. One in which centralized remote monitoring and management of connected products was essential for businesses. I pictured it like a banyan tree that starts with a single trunk and expands by growing interconnected roots from its limbs that form entirely new trunks, making up a unified system.

That visual is why, when I founded the company in 2013, we named it Banyan Hills Technologies (Banyan). Banyan started as a consulting company that provided software engineering and consulting services for systems like mobile platforms, payments technology, and data warehouses. The company was designed to fund the development of the Canopy platform with less of the financial risk typically associated with startups.

A pivotal milestone came when an Australian company requested assistance building a DVD rental kiosk to augment their brick-and-mortar businesses. This company had been speaking with Redbox about potentially acquiring some of the Blockbuster Express kiosks so they could redeploy and operate the machines in Australia. While they had a path to potentially acquiring the technology, they needed help localizing the hardware and software to their market.

Because we already had deep experience working with DVD kiosks, I saw an opportunity here for us to help them get to market while also creating service revenue for Banyan that could be reinvested in Canopy's development. 

So I flew to Australia and made the pitch. To my luck, they said, "yes!"

It got better still. My friend and colleague Webb Morris decided to become co-founder of the company. Webb saw the vision for Canopy, and he was willing to take a chance on making that vision a reality.

We were off!

Lessons and Challenges 

In August 2013, we got right to work. Banyan and its professional services offerings generated the revenue to fund the operational infrastructure required to run the business and develop the Canopy software platform. By the end of 2016, we released Canopy’s remote monitoring and management platform for commercial use.

For the next several years, we operated as both a consulting firm and a software provider. Through our consulting work, we collected learnings that helped shape Canopy. For example, during this time, we learned that simultaneously running a professional services business and product company was complex and that, eventually, we would need to narrow our focus to the originating vision for Canopy to reach its potential. That said, operating Banyan allowed us to incrementally build out the business disciplines required to run a product company while also performing the necessary research to guarantee that the market was, in fact, ready for a product like Canopy. 

Then, in 2021, the pandemic brought about an inflection point. The consulting side of our business compressed, with customers needing to tighten their budgets, forcing us to decide: Do we rebuild our consulting services or shut them down to focus on Canopy? We chose the latter. We secured investment dollars to help facilitate and bridge this transition, then set out to transform Banyan into a software company — Canopy. 

This shift required big changes for our business. We retired the Banyan brand in 2023 to fully embrace our Canopy identity. The market had evolved since we first conceived the idea, and so had the technology. What started as a platform to manage connected products has evolved into a solution capable of solving problems in an increasingly connected world, including new consumer trends and regulatory requirements.

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Shaping the Future of Connected Products 

Today, Canopy embodies the purpose I envisioned all those years ago: to connect deeply and completely to any remote product, collecting data from every endpoint. This connection makes it possible to automate remote device management and proactively attack downtime. Thanks to our experience working with companies like NCR, Redbox, Dell, AT&T, and Ricoh, we have the know-how to manage any connected product.

Canopy is a versatile platform designed to adapt and support today’s connected products and is ready to scale as new types of connected products take shape. For example, we’re already seeing this happen with products like sports simulators, unattended/automated broadcasting technology, and EV charging ports.

Looking ahead, we anticipate Canopy taking advantage of machine learning and AI to help inform business decision-making. Because we can integrate directly with connected products, Canopy can help collect the data AI systems need to make intelligent decisions. 

In August 2024, the company turned 11, coincidentally on the same day Canopy was listed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing American companies. Still, this is only the beginning. Our focus remains on solving the real-world challenges businesses face in remotely servicing their connected products. The landscape of connected products is changing fast, and Canopy is here to guide businesses through it, turning challenges into opportunities.

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