Video ga-ga

FVC.com tries to put a face on the ASP approach Trying to make two-way video applications an accepted tool of mainstream businesses must be a frustrating endeavor. Just think of the different service providers that have tinkered with various video offerings and service formats over the years and thrown up their hands in frustration - some more than once.

FVC.com isn't one of them. The company has been waiting patiently for several years for the spark that would set off the broadband video revolution. And as far as the company's founder is concerned, video's moment has finally arrived.

"Video telephony was a market waiting to be born for 20 years, and broadband is an enabler," says Ralph Ungermann, founder, chairman and CEO of FVC.com, using the term "telephony" to refer to the two-way characteristic of the application.

Ungermann has a history of patient market-making. He is the co-developer of one of the microprocessor chips that helped launch the PC industry. He also co-founded Ungermann-Bass Networks, where he developed what was reportedly the first Ethernet router, Ethernet chipset, Token Ring chipset and intelligent hub.

For the past seven years, Ungermann has aimed his technological attention at morphing the former First Virtual Corp. into what he describes as a wholesale video ASP. And his intentions for this technology are just as great as those for his earlier endeavors.

On stage at the Vortex conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif., earlier this year, Ungermann made this proclamation about broadband two-way video: "I believe it's going to be bigger than the telephone business."

FVC.com is taking multiple approaches to fulfilling Ungermann's video vision. The company's ASP designation comes from the fact that it acts as a wholesaler of its video services to other service providers, managing services and video events from its operations center using its Click to Meet portal and offering those services for delivery over carriers' broadband networks. The company also acts as a technology vendor, selling its video storage and delivery systems directly to large enterprise users.

The goal of it all is to take video to the masses - to take e-learning to every desk in every classroom, remote diagnosis to every exam room in every doctor's office and e-justice applications to every judge's chambers in every courtroom. And not just traditional conference room table videoconferencing, but personalized and individualized applications.

"Up until now, video's been limited to rooms," Ungermann says. "We're taking it to the desktop and making it a mass-market product."

Qwest Communications is an example of a service provider customer that listened to the concept, he adds. "We said, `You guys should be offering an IP-based video service.' They're now selling video service, and we're a wholesaler of the service offering."

And just last month, FVC.com upgraded the scalability of Click to Meet, allowing large enterprise users such as the Automotive Network Exchange to offer video capabilities to a range of employees and customers.

"We're talking about thousands of subscribers to the ANX and tens of thousands of end users," says Ruth Cox, vice president and chief marketing officer for FVC.com. "We're putting a face on electronic commerce."

Several market forces have paved the way for broader acceptance of broadband video in business, Cox says, including the increasing reliance on the Internet for business transactions and the globalization of business. "People are depending on electronic commerce to run their businesses," she says. The simplicity of deployment and the cost savings gained from reduced business travel requirements are important selling points for wary businesses, she adds.

To Ungermann, though, only one major phenomenon represents the turning point for the technology to which he's dedicated FVC.com and the past several years. Ungermann is convinced that the application was only waiting for the ubiquity of broadband access and the broadband Internet as a catalyst.

"This is exciting stuff, and it's all dependent on getting broadband," he says.