InformationWeek

Conferencing products let groups of people interact over networks; streaming technology lets a company broadcast a conference to many users at different locations. The combination of streaming and conferencing technologies should have strong appeal to many companies for uses such as training new hires about complex procedures. It also should appeal to financial institutions, analysts say.

"The key is to have one product under one user's control for both conferencing and streaming," says Marc Beattie, an analyst with Forward Concepts Electronic Market Research Inc.

White Pine is the first to merge the two technologies in a product based on the H.323 standard for videoconferencing over packet-switched networks, analysts say, but they expect other companies will offer similar products soon.

White Pine's MeetingPoint will integrate with several other vendors' streaming media servers and software, for example, Cisco's IPTV, Microsoft's NetShow Server and Windows Media Player, and RealNetworks' RealServer and RealPlayer.

In November, PictureTel Corp. integrated streaming technology obtained from its acquisition of StarLight Networks Inc. into the PictureTel StarCast conferencing product, but the technology is not based on the H.323 standard. Last month, VTEL Corp. purchased streaming media company Vosaic LLC. VTEL plans to integrate streaming and conferencing into a single product this summer.