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By Michael Csenger

Adventurous intranet managers are finding that streaming media can breathe life into Web applications and bring networks closer to an ultimate sensory experience. But poorly used, the technology begets ragged audiovisual props aspiring to infomercial quality, experts caution.

Intranet managers early on began lacing corporate Webs with streaming technology, starting with audio tools for playing sound files on the fly. Today, video and animation with synchronous slide presentations augment that streaming sound, and the suite of corporate applications that uses streaming technology is diverging to play several distinct roles.

Because return on investment (ROI) is most easily pegged to existing needs, streaming applications often land in an established area such as corporate training. They easily pick up where the hassles of CD-ROM delivery or live broadcasts leave off, providing new ways of doing old things more cost-effectively.

But new business potential is emerging.

Black and Veatch, the world's largest builder of power plants, puts streaming to use to the technology's utmost. The Kansas City, Mo., firm designs, finances and constructs large-scale developments, such as chemical factories and petroleum refineries, around the globe.

Industrial revolution

Whereas most users think of streaming media as a sensory enhancement, Black and Veatch Chief Technology Officer John Voeller believes it will revolutionize management of massive industrial projects.

Streaming technology describes a means of browsing large files in real time, so users can access them more dynamically. For example, rather than waiting the half-hour it might take for an entire 5M-byte video clip to download before they can play it, users can begin viewing a streamed video as it's being received.

The technique relies on dynamic compression and decompression between dedicated servers and client software. Most systems require proprietary browser plug-ins, but a trend is emerging to use quick Java applets instead.

Black and Veatch is working toward the next dimension of this basic streaming concept. Its business depends on enormous CAD files which are the lifeblood of any manufacturing or engineering process. Vital as they are, CAD systems block streamlined project management because they're proprietary and only can run on pricey, dedicated workstations.

Project partners who need to review a construction detail have to get to an engineer's workstation and then open the entire CAD file, which easily can be 300M bytes. Sharing such files across a network is difficult, and swapping disks leaves files vulnerable to inadvertent editing, revision mismatch or security breaches.

Black and Veatch recently started working with Envision3D, a streaming media tool from Adaptive Media, Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. Envision3D does for CAD images what streaming does for video: It only sends the part of a file a user is viewing and updates the scene as it unfolds. This spares bandwidth and lets browser-equipped users interact with complex design systems.

The Envision3D streaming tool uses the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) standard for animated 3-D Web content. Envision3D leverages the fact that most CAD systems can output design files in VRML format. By streaming the resulting VRML file, any Web browser with Adaptive's client software can open the images and tour the parts of a design. The Envision3D server conveys just the elements of a room or system that a user is examining, then refreshes the scene to move along or zoom in for a closer look.

"You can move through details of a complex object, but at no time does your machine have to manage the total information," Voeller says.

And because it's a viewer, Envision3D is more flexible than a CAD system. "The problem with CAD systems is that if you can open the information, you can screw with it,'' Voeller says. "With streaming, a person can do their job interrogating CAD data without being on a CAD seat and touching the data or getting into [restricted] areas.''

Voeller is helping Adaptive refine the product so it will allow logical context viewing. Construction managers would be able to view CAD renderings but only look at the stuff they have to install over the next four weeks, for example. A viewer would hit the CAD file and the scheduling database, then meld the information with a manager's inventory. This would show what items are going in and code them according to shipping status, Voeller explains.

"This goes beyond what most people call streaming media,'' Voeller says, adding that it comes at a time when big industry is settling on standards for the sort of information swapping that will enable the scenario he describes (see sidebar, page 18).

Moving pictures

Streaming VRML may be the hot topic in big industrial firms, but desktop audio and video remains the more familiar, mass-marketed side of streaming media. A myriad of vendors, content developers and systems integrators play in this field, as do pundits who offer varied perspectives on the technology's potential in enterprise applications.

Streaming is big on the Internet, with its use often tied to media events and TV shows. But its business use in intranets is limited by "early, crude'' technology, says Mark Hardie, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., in Cambridge, Mass.

"The end product just isn't of high enough quality that people are willing to rely on it on a regular basis,'' he says. "People talk a lot about training applications, but what are you really getting out of a herky-jerky, quarter-screen training video on your monitor?''

Likewise as a corporate communications tool, streaming media falls flat, Hardie argues. "Most face-to-face meetings come with a whole lot of in-person collateral. That's why you spend the money to conduct business,'' he says.

Streaming media proponents dismiss such arguments. "We can't pretend that this replaces human interaction, but it can be a great way before a meeting to bring everybody up to speed,'' says Marty Roberts, product manager of intranet solutions for RealNetworks, Inc., the Seattle-based company, formerly known as Progressive Networks, that dominates this market.

Corporate interest in streaming technology started picking up in the fall of 1996 when RealNetworks released RealAudio 3.0, which allows synchronized audio/Web presentations that support self-directed training applications.

The addition of more robust capabilities and the general uptake of intranet solutions continues to drive interest. Convenience, expediency and ROI are bywords of the corporate sphere.

GE Information Services (GEIS), for example, started using RealNetworks' technology last spring for communications and training applications that save money and improve user experiences.

GEIS holds quarterly meetings at which the CEO addresses all 2,000 employees, some in person but many others scattered in 65 locations worldwide. It was a logistical nightmare, says Trudy Wonder, GEIS' international communications manager.

At headquarters, for example, 800 employees share a conference facility that can only hold 200, so the CEO had to conduct each meeting four times in two days. "That's a lot to ask of a CEO every quarter, so when we presented him with a proposal to integrate video broadcasting into the program, we got the sign-off,'' Wonder says.

GEIS now streams the meetings to participants who can't attend in person. It sends audio, video and slide presentations across its intranet. "It's a terrific improvement,'' Wonder says.

GEIS also implemented a training application that replaces the earlier classroom requirements for sales certification. Streaming video is used, for example, to present customer-assessment scenarios. The training modules reduced each course from one week to two hours and have significantly raised overall proficiency, Wonder says.

Cashing in on ROI

Justified by straightforward training and communications ROI, streaming media can be leveraged to support broader ambitions in the scheme of corporate information exchange.

Knowledge sharing is a good example. Ernst & Young LLP develops training courses and seminars as part of its consultancy service. The firm videotapes programs - up to 20 or 30 hours worth every month - during live satellite broadcasts to clients around the world. It then offers the videotapes to people who miss the original program but decide they ought to have the material.

"The content was generally a one-shot deal,'' says Dale Coyner, executive producer of new media for Ernst & Young, in Vienna, Va. "People would rarely sit down and play the tape.''

Ernst & Young recently started pulling three or four clips from each of these video productions and packaging them in streaming video. The streaming updates are available to employees on the company's intranet and to clients on a private Web site. "It's a way to build our thought leadership, to get our point of view out and tell people what's happening,'' Coyner says.

But there's a catch to recycling corporate information: walking that fine line between re-use and refuse.

The streaming audience is a sophisticated tough sell, says Brad Grove, creative director of film, audio and video at Eagle River, Inc., a multimedia content developer in South Portland, Ore. "They've downloaded plug-ins to view this stuff, and if you give them late '80s-style industrial video or a bunch of talking heads, they'll tune out.''

So far, the people putting together streaming content mainly are programmers and marketing staffers who don't have backgrounds in media arts. "The craftsmen with experience in telling a story through media images are just starting to work in this field,'' Grove says. Their judgment can make the difference between a stiff talking head and a crafted mix of sights and sounds.

Streaming media's innovation ends at the margins of a PC screen. From there it plays on our senses to the exacting degree to which they're accustomed. When the technology looks and sounds as good as anyone might expect, users will still want to know: "What's the point?'' The best tools and applications will make their purpose clear.