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First Virtual Communications' Click to Meet Conference Server 7.0 Breaks New Performance and Scalability Barriers.


Business Editors

SANTA CLARA Santa Clara, city, Cuba
Santa Clara (sän`tä klä`rä), city (1994 est. pop. 217,000), capital of Villa Clara prov., central Cuba.
, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 2003

First Virtual Communications (Nasdaq: FVCX):

Up to 200 H.323 Endpoints at 512K Can Connect to a Single

off-the-Shelf Server

First Virtual Communications (Nasdaq: FVCX), a premier provider of rich media web conferencing A videoconferencing session via the Internet. In order to interact with other participants, attendees use either a Web application or an application downloaded into their client machines.  and collaboration solutions, today announced the immediate availability of Click to Meet(TM) Conference Server 7.0, the most powerful and scalable software-based Multipoint Control Unit See MCU.  (MCU (1) (MicroController Unit) A computer on a single chip. See microcontroller.

(2) (Multipoint Control Unit) A device that is used to moderate a videoconference of three or more end points (users at computers or groups of users
) available today, with more ports deployed worldwide than any other hardware or software-based IP based solution.

"Perfect timing for a great product," said George-Erick Brinckmann, president of Brinckmann & Associates, Inc. "Many of our customers who have been using this industry-leading software-only MCU are ready to grow and expand further with the new features and functionality of this release. More robust and scalable than anything else in the market, we believe this new version will benefit a variety of our customers, including John Wieland Homes, Bank of America
See also:  and


Bank of America (NYSE: BAC TYO: 8648 ) is the largest commercial bank in the United States in terms of deposits, and the largest company of its kind in the world.
 and a very large video visitation application with the Hillsborough County Hillsborough County is the name of two counties in the United States:
  • Hillsborough County, Florida, including Tampa
  • Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
 Sheriff's Office in Florida."

This new release provides immense scalability and key feature improvements. These improvements help the Conference Server better serve as the multimedia routing and collaboration engine for the Click to Meet web conferencing family, as well as support standards-based legacy conferencing equipment. As a stand-alone, standards-based MCU, the Conference Server delivers robust functionality to standards-based conferencing environments. It is also the core collaboration server included in the Click to Meet family of products and is currently installed in mission critical government, enterprise, education and military applications worldwide.

In an industry-first milestone, Conference Server achieves scalability and performance that is virtually unmatched in a software-only solution. New optimizations of Conference Server 7.0 allow a single server to scale up to two hundred H.323 endpoints at 512K connections, or over one hundred endpoints with higher bandwidth 768K connections on a single, off-the-shelf server using standard operating systems Operating systems can be categorized by technology, ownership, licensing, working state, usage, and by many other characteristics. In practice, many of these groupings may overlap. .

"Proprietary hardware is expensive to buy, maintain and ultimately replace. With the development of a powerful and robust software solution such as Conference Server 7.0, exceptionally powerful and scalable videoconferencing solutions are easy to put together and optimize for the tasks required, whether that is a 'ground-up' deployment, or augmenting current equipment investments," stated Andrew Davis, managing partner at Wainhouse. "Combined with Click to Meet web conferencing solutions, Conference Server provides one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market today."

Conference Server's Intelligent Linking(TM) technology allows multiple servers to be linked together to provide several key benefits. Multiple servers can be organized to deploy a distributed topology that can be optimized to reduce bandwidth across wide area networks. Intelligent Linking maintains individual attendee's identities across linked conferences, making conferences across multiple servers appear as one, large, virtual conference. This enables applications that use standards-based Continuous Presence or Click to Meet's Intelligent Continuous Presence to have more granular end-user conference control and use less bandwidth. Intelligent Linking also supports better scalability and performance than the "simple cascading" approach used in hardware-based MCUs.

Conference Server 7.0 supports an extensive collection of third party standards (including H.323, SIP, T.120), as well as the Click to Meet product family. New features have made Conference Server even easier to deploy into new and existing configurations with the addition of the following:

-- Per conference RSVP (ReSerVation Protocol) A communications protocol that signals a router to reserve bandwidth for real time transmission. RSVP is designed to clear a path for audio and video traffic, eliminating annoying skips and hesitations.  support for QoS

-- Polled SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) A widely used network monitoring and control protocol. Data are passed from SNMP agents, which are hardware and/or software processes reporting activity in each network device (hub, router, bridge, etc.  for H.323 MIBs for remote monitoring (protocol) remote monitoring - (RMON) A network management protocol that allows network information to be gathered at a single computer. Whereas SNMP gathers network data from a single type of Management Information Base (MIB), RMON 1 defines nine additional MIBs that provide a  of server

status

-- SOAP support to execute remote programmatic commands to the

Conference Server across HTTP HTTP
 in full HyperText Transfer Protocol

Standard application-level protocol used for exchanging files on the World Wide Web. HTTP runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol.
 connections

-- Enhanced streaming media See streaming audio, streaming video and digital media hub.  drivers provide better performance

when streaming live, interactive conferences to a wider

one-way audience through RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK RNWK Real Networks (stock symbol) ), Windows

Media or Apple(R) Quicktime(TM) streaming servers.

-- An updated Windows Installer Microsoft's installation system for Windows. The installer, which is available in Visual Studio and other stand-alone programs, compresses the application into .MSI "package" files, and the MSIEXEC.EXE program in the Windows PC performs the installation. Transform files (.  for simpler deployment

A software solution as robust, reliable and more scalable and cost effective than hardware, Conference Server makes the use of proprietary hardware deployments unnecessary in many common deployments where the assumption has traditionally been that software solutions weren't appropriate. Conference Server 7.0 provides extremely high scalability and performance, making it the industry-leading price/performance solution in this space.

Proven mission critical deployments

The Conference Server's unique ability to use multicast across Intelligently Linked Conference Servers, its ability to scale and deliver mission critical performance and reliability and its interoperability between different vendors' products has made it an ideal component in the deployment of many high-profile US Government programs, including:

-- The Defense Collaboration Tool A collaboration tool is something that helps people collaborate. The term is often used to mean collaborative software, but collaboration tools were being used before computers existed, a piece of paper can for example can be used as collaboration tool.  Set (DCTS DCTS Defense Collaboration Tool Suite
DCTS Dimension Custom Telephone Service
DCTS Delaware County Technical Schools (Pennsylvania)
DCTS Defense Collaborative Tool Set (distributed mission planning) 
) Over 8000 Conference

Server ports have been deployed to support standards-based

collaboration in various military settings.

-- The Battlefield Video Teleconference (BVTC BVTC Battlefield Video-Teleconferencing Center ) This system, using

Conference Server, allows tactical commanders to effectively

disseminate orders, clearly convey their intent and

collaboratively plan courses of action with subordinate

commanders and key staff elements using video, audio and data

collaboration in real time.

-- Joint En-route Mission Planning and Rehearsal System (JEMPERS)

Click to Meet Express provides a capability that supports

effective en-route collaboration and access to rear-based

information systems across limited worldwide mobile (air and

land) reach-back satellite links.

-- Secure En-route Communications Package (SECOMP SECOMP secure en route communications package (US DoD)
SECOMP Secure Communications Package
 II) This

communications package, that includes Conference Server,

enables key leaders to maintain multimedia communications

continuously during crisis deployment, exchanging information

all the way to the area of operations An operational area defined by the joint force commander for land and naval forces. Areas of operation do not typically encompass the entire operational area of the joint force commander, but should be large enough for component commanders to accomplish their missions and protect their .

-- Home Land Security C2 ACTD ACTD Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration/Demonstrator (US DoD)
ACTD A Call to Duty (Star Trek)
ACTD Advanced Concept Technical Demonstration
ACTD Australian Conference of TAFE Directors
 Click to Meet components and the

underlying Click to Meet Conference Server linked seven major

sites which included 14 Department of Defense (DoD) agencies,

seven Federal agencies, 14 State agencies and five

Intelligence organizations connecting 200 simultaneous users

providing video, audio and data collaboration.

-- Internet Voice Distribution System (IVoDS) A custom

development of the Click to Meet user interface coupled with

the Conference Server gives NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA
 in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Independent U.S.
 operations staff the ability

to collaborate with 32 NASA and International Space Station

Sites worldwide in real time.

"The Click to Meet Conference Server not only bridges connections between a wide variety of standards-based endpoints in an immensely scalable way, but also bridges 'legacy videoconferencing' products with Click to Meet web conferencing solutions," said Bob Romano, vice president of marketing at First Virtual Communications. "Conference Server is the industry-unique media engine that allows true integration of room- and desktop-based legacy video systems, standard telephones and today's desktop rich media web conferencing."

Pricing and Availability

Click to Meet Conference Server is available now and priced at $11,900 US for a 10 port concurrent-user license and is also available in 25, 50, 75, 100, 150 and 200 port license configurations. Intelligent Linking and concurrent licensing model that doesn't require "named" endpoints provides optimum flexibility in deploying across multiple locations and topologies. Streaming Media, G.722/G.729 and H.323 Continuous Presence software options are available at extra cost. Conference Server is available for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT MSFT Microsoft (stock symbol)
MSFT Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore (Italy)
MSFT Multi-Stage Fitness Test
MSFT Master of Science in Family Therapy
MSFT Macalester Students for Fair Trade
) Windows, RedHat (Nasdaq: RHAT RHAT Red Hat (stock symbol)
RHAT Rainwater Harvesting Association of Tanzania
RHAT Register Hba Attributes
) Linux and Sun (US:SUNW SUNW Sun Microsystems, Inc (former stock symbol; now JAVA)
SUNW Stanford University Network Workstation (Sun Microsystems, Inc) 
) Solaris. Additional pricing information can be obtained from First Virtual Communications and its authorized reseller channel by sending email to salesinfo@fvc.com

Conference Server 7.0 will be making its debut on the Microsoft Windows 2003 Server platform at the Microsoft Windows 2003 roll-out event in San Francisco this week on Thursday, April 24, as the media routing engine for the Click to Meet Express 2.0 demonstration.

About First Virtual Communications

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California Santa Clara, California (IPA: /ˌsæntəˈklærə/) , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. , First Virtual Communications is a premier provider of next generation web conferencing and collaboration solutions. It delivers award winning integrated communications solutions that address the needs of business people who need to work together remotely to collaborate, train, demonstrate or sell. The Company has defined the next generation of web conferencing by adding optional video with easier enterprise deployment and a potentially greater return on investment. The Company's products provide business quality communication by supporting a wide range of industry standards and works in existing customer environments. The Company's solutions integrate seamlessly with existing tools and methodologies, such as email and web browsing, while extending the advantages of instant messaging and collaboration environments, such as MSN Messenger and Microsoft Exchange. The Company's innovative solutions are deployed in over 1,400 customer sites worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and service providers with installations of up to 8,000 seats. Additional information about First Virtual Communications can be found on the Web at http://www.fvc.com.

Cautionary Statement

Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements containing the words, "believes,'' "anticipates,'' "expects'' and words of similar import. Such forward-looking statements have known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of First Virtual Communications, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: the success of and timely release of Click to Meet(TM) products, the continued increase in sales of the Company's Click to Meet(TM) and Conference Server products, First Virtual Communications' variability of operating results, market acceptance of web conferencing technology, potential inability to maintain business relationships with integrators, distributors and suppliers, rapid technological changes, competition and consolidation in the web conferencing industry, the importance of attracting and retaining personnel, and other risk factors referenced in First Virtual Communications' public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's report on Form 10-K Form 10-K

A report required by the SEC from exchange-listed companies that provides for annual disclosure of certain financial information.


Form 10-K

See 10-K.
 for the year ended December 31, 2002.

All trademarks are recognized.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Business Wire
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2003, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Publication:Business Wire
Date:Apr 22, 2003
Words:1551
Previous Article:Schwab Announces Quarterly Results.
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