Part 1: Intranets, nCore and cost savings

Hi, Chris. Can you tell us the background behind the launch of Digital Pipe?
Digital Pipe was launched in mid-1998 upon the premise that streaming media would revolutionize the way we all communicate in business.

Growing up with Exodus from a handful of people in a shipping/receiving room to a multi-billion dollar company, I knew first-hand the communications inefficiencies that exist for large, fast-growing and dispersed organizations.

Especially in today's Internet economy, corporations need to train and communicate with employees efficiently if they want to stay competitive and retain employees.

How is your ncore service unique in comparison to other streaming media providers?
Ncore was actually launched in September 2000 as the first solution to provide high performance TV-quality video on private corporate networks, or intranets. Today it has evolved as a technology-based solution for enterprises to maximize employee productivity while minimizing network impact.

It incorporates an ICDN (intranet content delivery network) approach that delivers rich media content from inside the core of a company's networks rather that from the public Internet. Content is secure and bandwidth bottlenecks are overcome. This is drastically different than other content delivery models on the market today.

Why did Digital Pipe focus exclusively on streaming media for corporate use as opposed to customer use?
We chose to exclusively focus on the enterprise because that is where we saw the greatest opportunity for adoption, based on both need and ability to fund the project. Companies have no choice but to continually train and re-train their employees. And they have to get important messages to them regularly.

Flying employees into centralized locations is extremely costly. And distributing VHS and CD-ROMs is time consuming, costly and is hard to measure. Moreover, intranets that are already in place are underutilized. Streaming media is the next logical step.

Is streaming media a vital component of a company's Internet technology?
Video is the most compelling way to communicate, aside from face-to-face. Combine that with the global reach of the Internet and you have a powerful and scalable tool for communicating with people around the globe. Moreover, it has considerable return on investment.

Companies that leverage a portion of corporate communications and training online using streaming have been able to cut their budgets in half! Companies also save money on bandwidth utilization, by caching and storing both streamed and Web content locally. Whereas the Internet was initially characterized by mostly text and images, we will soon see audio, video, and animation be commonplace.

How can streaming media be used by a company to build up its relationships with clients, partners and investors?
I don't believe that streaming media will ever replace face-to-face communications entirely. But it gives companies the opportunity to leverage this technology to increase the impact, frequency and reach of their communications and training programs.

We have seen examples of companies using it to train partners and resellers on new products, to train sales reps on selling techniques, and to automate the customer service experience.

In all cases, companies that have employed the technology have been successful in accelerating time-to-market, shortening the sales cycle, and reducing budgets.

How does using streaming media for a corporate intranet avoid some of the negative aspects surrounding its use in advertising, for instance?
The difficult part about using streaming for advertising is that the technology depends on certain plug-ins and capabilities on the end users machine and connectivity. Sure, it's easier to target users on the Net, but it's much more difficult to control the experience at the end point. There are many potential points of failure. When a broadband world truly exists, many of these problems will be overcome.

On the other hand, a corporate intranet is a controlled environment. We can tell exactly what capabilities end user's have and how much bandwidth is available. This makes it a great environment to exploit streaming media.

And how do bandwidth constraints, compatibility issues and limited usability impact the solution of streaming media?
All of these factors greatly diminish the streaming experience. Fortunately, our solution is deployed in a controlled and secure environment which enables us to minimize or overcome these factors. In addition, our experience behind the firewall has enabled us to develop proprietary technology to overcome many technical barriers. It has also helped us partner with corporations and help them find ways to maximize its effectiveness internally.

For example, we have been helping National Semiconductor successfully execute monthly broadcasts across their internal network. Not only are we helping them maximize the user experience with compelling content and simple user interface, but we are also minimizing the impact on the network where bandwidth is a precious commodity.

What cost savings impact does streaming bring to a company?
Companies are already taking advantage of streaming to add consistency and reach to corporate communications. They are using it to offer more frequent training programs, available anytime and anywhere. And, they are saving a lot of money in the meantime. Cost savings typically come in the form of reduced expenses associated with travel (airfares, hotels, expenses), classroom-based training materials, distribution and updates (VHS, CD-ROM, books), and opportunity costs.

Furthermore, we can now leverage tools that can track usage and performance, which helps marketing and training managers better measure their programs.

Continued...