Streaming Media - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 26) real-time data collaboration far and away as the most well as security breaches when critical documents were important, with audio as second and video as a distant hosted by a third-party service provider. third, created a bit of a buzz in a video-centric industry. So why spend all this time catching up on the history The results appear to hold true even today, as collaborative of collaborative computing from the 20th century? The computing users will sacrifice in-band audio (i.e., VoIP) simple answer is context; the broader answer is that for a landline or mobile call if bandwidth is just barely challenges—and opportunities—still remain for ubiquitous adequate for data sharing. Even if there is plenty of collaborative computing. bandwidth for audio, video, and data collaboration, users Even some of the big players still remain, as varied as are less likely to turn on their video cameras except to folks such as Craig Malloy and Frik Strecker. Malloy show something that can’t be shown with other available started ViaVideo to focus on personal videoconferencing, collaborative tools. worked with Polycom/PictureTel after PictureTel and DataBeam wasn’t finished innovating, though. Under ViaVideo were acquired by Polycom, and has now gone the leadership of co-founder Neil Starkey (who headed on to start LifeSize, focusing on high-definition videoconthe ITU’s International Multimedia Teleconferencing ferencing. Strecker was with White Pine, makers of Consortium, which standardized T.120 for use in videoCUSeeMe, then he went to First Virtual Corp. and now conferencing environments), the company had a much heads a company called GatherWorks. There are bigger goal: Now that the standard was established, many others, but the point is this: What happened in DataBeam wanted to separate T.120 from reliance on 1993–1996 still has a huge impact on how we videoconferencing and instead focus on the emerging approach today’s collaborative computing issues, as world of the internet. In late 1996, the company made many of today’s products are incremental gains on T.120-based data collaboration possible over the yesterday’s innovations. internet, saying in a press release that “anyone using an HTML browser can conference over the internet or Desktop Presentation Tools corporate intranet” with the release of its neT.120 At the top of the collaborative toolbox sits what are Conference Server. often viewed as the only collaborative tools available. Timing on the release of Conference Server proved These tools, dubbed presentation or webcasting tools, beneficial, as the H.323 packet-based videoconferencing are designed to allow viewers to log in and view a live standard was also coming into play, with better codecs that are still in use today (Sorenson Spark, for instance, is used in Flash video). Companies such as White Pine, which made the CUSeeMe internetbased consumer videoconferencing system, adopted H.323 and T.120 at the same time with the intent of seamlessly integrating document collaboration and video chat. Once again, the limiting factor was bandwidth, although not the same bandwidth issues faced by the old videoconferencing systems. T.120 worked great for the enterprise customer, but it also created a problem for the average road warrior, since broadband connectivity on the road or in home offices was limited, to say the least. Even if one did have broadband at home, the corporate internet pipes in those days were also limited and were often clogged with non-real-time messaging or HTML traffic. So those road warriors or telecommuters who wanted to use application sharing or document collaboration, even for something as simple as a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, were severely limited in their ability to participate if they were off the corporate intranet. And companies weren’t so keen to host their documents on an external server Brainshark CEO Joe Gustafson argues that while might be a consumer market for free videoconferencing, the to accommodate those outside the corporate enterprise market still demands a full-service solution that people are willing to pay for. firewall, fearing additional bandwidth drains on the corporate internet pipes, as 26 STREAMING MEDIA December 2007/January 2008 let’s work together
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