Netspoke Inc., in effort to add streaming media technology to its conferencing portfolio, Monday acquired the software assets of e-StudioLive Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
E-StudioLive began life offering a hardware-based appliance for capturing and creating streaming media presentation that included audio, video and slides. The company was in the process of developing a software-only application but never released it.
Netspoke, which offers audio, Web and video conferencing services and competes with the likes of WebEx and Genesys Conferencing, bought the software technology, but no physical or personnel assets from the company, says Scott D’Entremont, CEO of Netspoke.
Netspoke hopes to integrate the streaming creation and management technology into its offering of services sometime in early 2005. It will be offered as a hosted model and not something a customer installs locally. “Big enterprises have different (rich media) needs ranging from small groups of four to five people working on a document to a CEO town meeting,” D’Entremont says. “That one-to-many meeting is the application for (the e-StudioLive) software.”
All of Netspoke’s current offerings are for real-time communications and D’Entremont hopes this will add a new wrinkle to his company’s offerings. “This offers a nice option for people to have dynamic content on their Web sites, like a streaming message from a CEO, things like that,” he says.
One thing Netspoke will not be is a streaming media provider competing with the likes of Akamai Technologies Inc., Mirror Image Inc. or Speedera Networks Inc. “This is software that will help create and manage the content for the enterprise,” D’Entremont says. “We play in the information, not the infrastructure — just like we don’t supply dial tone. We’re an enhanced service that sits on the network.”