Heeere's MSHOW!: Multimedia IP conferencing is ready for you. Are ready for it?

You can barely get the words "video over IP" out before people will tell you all the reasons it ain't gonna happen any time soon. H.323 interoperability issues aside, Internet protocol videoconferencing won't be a mainstay in the business world until businesses and carriers have the bandwidth to make sure it looks good. But companies like self-described application service provider MSHOW.com have a Boy Scout pledge mentality to IP video: Be prepared. If you have the technology for a future need, you can be there for customers when they're asking for it.

"We are focused on delivering applications to service providers to help them use their backbone infrastructures," says Bob Ogdon, president and CEO of MSHOW. "We will provide high-end video when bandwidth becomes more readily available."

The Denver-based company was started in 1996 to provide users with multimedia applications that had previously only been available by CD-ROM, Ogdon says.

"With MSHOW, we wanted to take the multimedia experience you can get over CD-ROM and let people experience it live," he says. "What it developed into was, `How can I teach, sell and persuade over live multimedia?'"

What the company created was a tool that can be used for conferencing, press announcements, seminars and presentations - all with a combination of regular phones, Internet and, by the end of the year, video. Business and service provider customers will be able to use any combination of voice and video over IP, depending on their networks. The video quality the company offers is at about a 300 kb/s range, meaning that customers with more bandwidth will receive better quality, but those with less can still get a reliable picture.

"People who don't have as much bandwidth can still participate - just with slightly flatter graphics and media," Ogdon says. "So we can reach the common denominator."

He stresses the point of using a regular phone along with the "show," for the purpose of reliability. However, audio over IP is also available. The point is, as many applications as possible should be available so that users can create their own combination of audio, video and data to suit their needs.

"The idea is how to do things in a more economical way for users, and how to do it in a way that takes less time out of their day," Ogdon says.

The company's first challenges were those of many new Internet-based companies. First, they had to deal with problems of getting past firewalls. Then, they needed to build a service model that would allow the application to reach large numbers of people in the most practical way possible. They had to ensure that their technology was strong enough so that an MSHOW wouldn't look like a group PowerPoint presentation, Ogdon says.

Currently, an MSHOW is a highly interactive and multifaceted event. After a registration process, users enter a conferencing area with many choices of activities. They can click on a map and see where all other participants are located throughout the world. They can send messages to specific participants or to the group. The leader of the session can ask a question of the group. Participants each click on an answer, and the presentation automatically displays a pie chart of the answers. The leader can also go to any site on the Web and take the group along. Advertisers can display banner ads with hyper links to their sites. In addition, shows can be archived for future use, and sound bytes can be saved and played during a session for all users to hear.

Most shows, which last on average about 80 minutes, have from 50 to 150 participants, but Ogdon says that the service has the capacity for thousands of people. Five thousand people should be able to participate per session by the end of the year, he adds.

One of the main reasons for using an MSHOW is marketing - selling products and services to customers, Ogdon says. He uses an example of a company that wanted to introduce a product. It sent out 10,000 e-mails leading to about 250 participants that were divided into two different shows. The show had a tremendous response. Many people asked questions, leading to more than an hour of interactive discussion. Meanwhile, the company was able to learn a wealth of information about its potential customers. They also happened to have a large Australian audience, which would've been hard to reach had it been a traditional teleconference.

MSHOW can also be used as a valuable training tool, Ogdon says. Qwest Communications uses the service to introduce new products to its various channels, he explains.

"Qwest offers MSHOW - privately labeled as QSHOW - as a product through their sales channel," he says. "But they also use it for themselves for things like training and internal briefings. It's a good example of a partner that is also a big user."

Companies such as Qwest are valuable customers for MSHOW.com because they are evolving toward IP. "They are moving themselves from a traditional telephony to an IP-based company, so as they build out their network, our goal is to create the traffic for them that runs over that network," Ogdon says.

MSHOW is used by several other carriers, including U S West and Enron Communications. It is also used by resellers such as Conference Plus Inc., which combines MSHOW with its own teleconferencing product. CPI President and CEO Rick Riviere says it has been a successful combination. He says that the data conferencing market is growing slowly, but the idea of it is causing a spark throughout the industry. "We're getting in the door to talk to clients just based on that," he says.

The customers that MSHOW will pursue next are ISPs and data CLECs, Ogdon says. Some of its customers such as Enron are already partnering with CLECs to provide video over the last mile. The video, voice and data combination will help such companies truly leverage their networks, he says.

"Data CLECs are just now starting to provide high-speed connectivity," Ogdon says. "The next thing they will need is applications."

As networks improve and more fiber is installed, running video over IP will become more of a reality, Ogdon says. The last challenge to video will be getting it past corporate LANS and to the desktop successfully.

Eventually, though, improvements in local networks will allow for high-quality video, "though it will be quite a few years before many people will get it," he says. "The last mile is the key to it all."

However - going back to the "be prepared" mentality - it will benefit the company to have video over IP technology available when the need for it grows. "There will always be variations in the marketplace. We need to be ready to deliver it when the market is ready," Ogdon says.

Video over IP itself will have a huge and significant effect when it does fully arrive, Ogdon says. "But it has to be high quality. If it's bad, it takes away from the whole presentation."

He believes that the industry will see a significant increase in video over IP over the next 5 years.

Still, 1999 was the year when the telephony industry shifted from building networks to applications, he says, and that makes a great opportunity for companies like MSHOW.

"When we set out with this company, we knew people would want applications. But now we have more of an opportunity than we ever dreamed," he says. "We didn't know about Qwest or Level 3 or that the data CLECs would go crazy with bandwidth. Now we feel like we're in the phase of fulfilling our promise."