SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA (08/17/2000) - Eloquent Inc. next week will announce version 6.0 of the Eloquent Communication Server (ECS) featuring enhanced support for the RealNetworks Inc., Microsoft Corp./ and QuickTime streaming media formats and beefed up interaction capabilities for end users.
ECS 6.0 is used by corporate customers for all types of communications that require rich media including sales presentations, product pitches, training and corporate communications. Previous version of ECS only supported Eloquent's proprietary streaming format, meaning customers had to have their audio/video clips encoded by the company's professional services division.
"We're extending our services to be able to manage all types of streaming content, not just our own materials," says Jane Buele, vice president of marketing at Eloquent. "We wanted to make the product useful for companies that don't have and may never have Eloquent content."
With this latest version, customers can synchronize audio and video, discussions and other attachments to a base presentation. Each clip and synchronized snippet can reside on different servers and can be pulled in by ECS. The one catch is that Eloquent customers must have their own server for streaming out the Real, Microsoft or QuickTime formats, Buele says.
"The new features could be more of a value for those using ECS, since customers won't have to go back to Eloquent to make changes in their streaming media files," says Greg Dyer, senior research analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
Other enhancements include the ability to integrate with central directory systems for increased security and a more easily modified user interface for those customers that want to customize the look and feel of their implementations. The server also comes with a built-in personalization engine that allows users to view the content that is relative to them in a single screen, much like today's Web portals.
For those customers that want outside support in building their rich media presentations, Eloquent still offers a wide arrange of professional services.
ECS 6.0 runs on Windows NT and 2000 with support for Sybase Inc.'s Anywhere 6, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Oracle Corp.'s 8. The system is build on Java and uses Java Server Pages, JNDI, JDBC, Java Servlets. XML is used to map content from the database to a presentation.
Pricing starts at $125,000.