With a range of tools, servers and services available for creating, encoding and delivering streaming media, it can be difficult for corporate content creators to know what the correct combination is to get the job done.
RealNetworks Inc. is looking to make things easier with a newly announced set of tools and services designed for corporate communication and sales training needs. “We’ve always had the components parts that our leading customers have put together to solve a problem,” says Kevin Foreman, a general manager in RealNetworks systems group. Foreman likens to the new strategy to a car – rather than give a customer just the parts, they’re giving them the whole car.
In addition to making content creation and delivery easier, RealNetworks is also making system administration easier with RealOne Desktop and RealOne Desktop Manager. The RealOne Desktop can be configured to limit the number of features available to the user. For instance, system administrators can shut of CD-burning capabilities and other consumer features. The RealOne Desktop Manager lets IS staff configure the player settings centrally and blast it out to all corporate desktops.
Foreman says administrators can also set bandwidth limitations in the player, so a senior vice president can get video at up to 300K bit/sec while general employees only get up to 150K bit/sec. “This makes it easier to forecast bandwidth demand on the network,” Foreman says.
One the creation side, RealNetworks has partnered with TechSmith to create the Camtasia Corporate Training Suite, a set of tools and servers designed for training applications. The suite, priced at US$2,599, includes Camtasia: RealSystem Edition for capturing screen activity, RealSystem Producer Plus for encoding content and RealSystem Server Plus for delivering the final product. RealNetworks also is partnering with softTV.net to offer Real Networks Presentation Maker, a system for synchronizing PowerPoint presentations with audio and video.
RealNetworks also has support packages available for those that need dedicated technical help and service offerings that allow traffic to be delivered using the Real Broadcast Network.