InformationWeek

Multimedia Is The Message

Conditions are ripe for business applications to come alive with video, animation, and sound

By Eric R. Chabrow

Imagine you're the developer of a new multistory office building seeking some big-name companies as lead tenants. Construction is still under way, but you want to let prospective tenants tour the building's impressive atrium. So you crank up your PC and let the prospect--with mouse in hand--"walk" through the lobby. "Turning" the head upward, the prospect sees the glass ceiling. By "glancing" to the right, a bank of elevators appears. A "climb" up a monumental staircase to the mezzanine affords the prospective lessee a panoramic view of the lobby below.

Archimage Inc., a Houston architect ural design firm, is developing just such a presentation for a Washington-based builder using two products: 3D Studio, a graphics and animation software package from Autodesk Inc. in Sausalito, Calif., and Director, a multimedia authoring tool from Macromedia Inc. in San Francisco. Autodesk is leveraging the wide installed base of users of its flagship AutoCAD software to introduce corporations to the advantages of multimedia software applications. According to CEO Carol Bartz, Autodesk has even been working with a nuclear plant on a 3-D training and visualization application that so far involves $1.7 million worth of AutoCAD and 3D Studio software.

Power And Dynamics
"Multimedia tools give us the opportunity to create more powerful and dynamic presentations," says Archimage CEO Richard Buday. "Power and dynamics of a presentation used to be restricted by the personality of presenters and how quickly they could think on their feet. But with interactive, nonlinear presentations, multim edia becomes the great equalizer."

Multimedia has yet to explode in America's offices and factories, but experts see 1995 as a year of aggressive experimentation. "Despite having been talked about for a decade, the multimedia market is very young," says Michael Braun, CEO of Kaleida Labs Inc., a Mountain View, Calf., a software venture that released its ScriptX multimedia authoring tool kit in December.

Multimedia is the only part of the computing market in which business trails consumers. Last year, consumers spent $6 for every $1 businesses spent on multimedia products. Still, business spending is growing faster. In 1994, consumers bought almost $19 billion worth of multimedia wares, up about 15% from 1993, according to market research firm Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif. In contrast, business spending on multimedia offerings doubled from 1993 to 1994, reaching $3 billion.

The popularity of CD-ROM drives and sound cards on home systems has driven down prices to the point where they are standard fare on most PCs. With multimedia features finding their way to the office, conditions are ripe for the alphanumeric world of spreadsheets, word processors, and database applications to come alive with video clips, animation, and sound.

Less Sizzle, More Meat
But the multimedia applications to be found at the desktop will contain fewer dazzling special effects and more practical displays that meet basic business needs. The No. 1 use of CD-ROM at the desktop level is still software distribution , according to Dataquest's survey last year of large corporations.

Companies employing multimedia tend to be pragmatic in its use. "Rather than get caught up in killer applications, users look at multimedia from a technical and economical perspective," says Tasha Seitz, an analyst with the Gartner Group Inc., a consultancy in Stamford, Conn.

Delta Air Lines uses a multimedia application to keep a lid on training costs mandated by the federal government. Las t year, the Federal Aviation Administration added requirements to its annual flight attendants' refresher course, calling for a second day of training. The cost to house Delta's 17,000 flight attendants for a day of training in Atlanta--about $2 million a year--was the same amount needed to develop and implement a multimedia training program. Savings will be realized after one year. "The cost to add modules to the training will be minimal since the hardware is already in the field," says Gail Heisler, a Delta senior programming analyst.

In some instances, businesses are using multimedia not only to save money but also to generate income. During the strike-shortened 1994 season, Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins, in a joint venture with kiosk maker North Communications Inc. in Santa Monica, Calif., sold tickets to the team's games at interactive kiosks located at 30 supermarkets in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. "The transactional process is absolutely key," says Michael North, president of Nort h Communications. "It doesn't make sense just to provide information. The heart and soul of information is the transaction."

Mixing sound, video, and touch makes using the kiosk simple for ticket buyers. After fans select seats from a multicolored seating plan of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, the screen displays a wide-angle view of home plate from the section where their seats are located.

That kind of service means business is getting the multimedia message.

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