BurstPoint Networks Changes The Rules For Enterprise Video Communications

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. (BUSINESS WIRE) BurstPoint Networks today announced availability of the BurstPoint Video Communication Platform (VCP), a fully integrated scalable end-to-end enterprise platform that enables organizations to deploy a single solution for the capture, distribution, management, viewing, and usage reporting of high-quality live streaming or stored high-definition video content. The release of the BurstPoint VCP coincides with the official launch of BurstPoint Networks.

The use of video represents an efficient and cost-effective way for all types of organizations to share important information quickly with key constituents, including employees, partners and customers. A message from the CEO, employee training and education sessions, customer support, and many other types of interaction with core audiences, can all benefit from high-quality video delivered to users independent of location or access device. With the introduction of the BurstPoint VCP, BurstPoint is enabling its customers to streamline the workflows for creating and publishing live and on-demand HD video programming to an extent not possible with the multi-vendor solutions more commonly available. Through its support for video capture and creation, video content delivery, deployment of rich video portals and digital signage, the BurstPoint VCP is making it easier for organizations to deploy a fully integrated platform that covers all the crucial aspects required to effectively incorporate video into an advanced communications strategy.

"Video continues to be adopted by leading-edge organizations seeking an effective and efficient means for communicating both every day, and mission critical, time sensitive information. Whether streaming to an individual, to a department, or enterprise wide, the use of video helps maximize the impact of the message," explained Ira Weinstein, senior analyst and partner, Wainhouse Research. "The BurstPoint offering simplifies the procurement and deployment process for end-user customers by including the most coveted streaming features, including content creation, support for live and on-demand content, and integrated digital signage, within a single offering."

The BurstPoint VCP addresses a fundamental challenge often faced by organizations wishing to incorporate video into their day-to-day operations. The majority of available technologies are point solutions that require manual integration and lack the performance, cost savings, and scalability required to be truly effective. As important, users may also find selecting other solutions require new core infrastructure be deployed to support their chosen technology. As a unified platform developed by BurstPoint, organizations are assured that not only are all components of the platform interoperable, but they also will deploy seamlessly into an existing WAN/LAN infrastructure, alleviating the bandwidth burden many organizations face. The BurstPoint VCP's unique centrally managed, distributed architecture allows for support of thousands of simultaneous streams minimizing impact to network operations, provides a cost-effective upgrade path, and is easy to use.

"The BurstPoint Video Communication Platform is a key piece of our enterprise-wide communications initiatives," said Terry Gordon, who manages the MultiMedia Technology Group at MetLife. "From live town hall meetings, to streamed CEO and executive presentations, we can easily create and distribute content when and where needed."BurstPoint VCP Manager is the central management platform and is the portal from which users can create, manage, and view video content. The BurstPoint VCP Manager is used to publish video content from a variety of sources, such as live or recorded video and video conferencing systems, and distribute content. The BurstPoint VCP Manager can be used to assign user privileges to certain content, create and update playlists for display on digital signage, collect and analyze usage data, produce reports, and centrally manage updates to the system.

BurstPoint VCP Encoder enables video capture, encoding, and transcoding for distribution across the organization. The BurstPoint VCP Encoder connects to any video source and converts raw video to a format suitable for streaming.

BurstPoint VCP Conference Point is a patent protected technology that serves as the capture point for streaming video from video conferencing systems. The BurstPoint VCP Conference Point can interface with a customer's video conferencing equipment through established CODECs and MCUs and either stream live or record the content to file for future distribution. An optional feature in the BurstPoint VCP Conference Point enables the synching of video with live PowerPoint slides, eliminating the need to convert slides to static images and thus preserving animations and other interactive features.

BurstPoint VCP Delivery Node is the solution's core infrastructure and provides local serving of video streams. The BurstPoint VCP Delivery Node can be deployed seamlessly within existing WAN/LAN architectures and features intelligent routing, built-in redundancy, and the ability to support video on-demand caching. The centrally managed distributed architecture of the BurstPoint Delivery Node is designed to enable a highly scalable solution in both performance and size of deployment.

BurstPoint VCP Display Engine extends the reach of enterprise video into the realm of highly flexible digital signage. A small set-top box form factor device that interfaces with high-definition display devices, the BurstPoint VCP Display Engine supports both high-definition video and JPEG formats and can stream live feeds as well as pre-established and easily updated playlists.Recognizing the need for enterprises to deliver content to potentially thousands of users simultaneously, the BurstPoint VCP is engineered to support these initiatives and more, with minimal impact to WAN performance. As important, the company built the BurstPoint VCP with future scalability in mind, both behind and beyond the corporate firewall. Designed for tight integration with third-party content delivery network (CDN) providers, the BurstPoint VCP is well positioned to provide enterprises the capability to cost-effectively deliver content to a nearly limitless number of users, fully independent of location.

"Video is such a powerful communications vehicle, and we are making it significantly easier for our customers to deliver rich media content securely to their constituents," said Tom Racca, president and CEO, BurstPoint. "We've addressed and eliminated the key hurdles to implementing enterprise streaming video with a fully scalable and robust end-to-end platform that can grow with our customers as their requirements evolve."