Kontiki Serves Up Rich Media Files

Kontiki Inc., whose software lets companies tap their collective desktop computing resources to deliver cumbersome content such as rich media files, is expanding that capability to servers. The vendor this week introduces grid delivery-server software to harness excess server computing power and give IT managers more bandwidth control.

A server-based delivery model will help Kontiki customers get around the fact that unconnected PCs can compromise content delivery, Gartner analyst Lawrence Orans says. "It makes this type of delivery more predictable and with a better quality of service," he says.

Palm Inc. uses Kontiki's delivery-management system to lower the cost of delivering customer-support videos. The grid delivery server could help Palm serve up additional video without adding hardware to support it. "You always want to have a certain amount of headroom available so your Web site doesn't choke," says Mark Roe, VP of Palm services.

Kontiki's grid delivery-server software is included in the company's flagship delivery-management system, which costs $87 per seat, plus $19 a year in annual maintenance for a small deployment. The minimum transaction size is $240,000.