Radiance ties file-delivery software to business apps

New plug-ins from Radiance Technologies integrate the vendor’s file-delivery software with business applications so users can send files they’ve been working on without opening a separate Radiance client.

Called Radiance Application OnRamps, the software plug-ins can help reduce costs by cutting the number of mistakes users make when they manually move files to a transport application, says Gerry Kaufhold, an analyst with research firm In-Stat.

“It makes transport transparent,” Kaufhold says. “It reduces the number of possibilities of human errors and makes it simpler to send work to the next person that needs to get it.” Fewer errors mean fewer help desk calls, which can help reduce overall costs, he says.

The plug-ins act as intermediaries between a business application and the Radiance software platform, which is part of the company’s TrueDelivery system for delivering large files over IP networks.

Radiance is unveiling its Application OnRamps this week at the National Association of Broadcasters NAB2007 conference in Las Vegas.

The system consists of client software that sends files from desktops to Radiance servers, which then compress, encrypt, schedule delivery and send files to a Radiance server at the receiving end. The receiving servers notify individual users when files have arrived for them, and they contact the servers to pick them up.

The servers also can broadcast files to members of mailing lists, which reduces the time it takes an individual to send to a group.

Without plug-ins, users have to fire up Radiance’s Courier client, drag and drop files into it, address the files and upload them to the server, which can be local or within Radiance’s network.

With the plug-ins, users employ tools within the application they are working in that automatically send the file to the Courier client for transport to a Radiance server. Users working on large files such as commercial video or CAD drawings are generally engrossed in those tasks and are reluctant to pull themselves out to ship files, Kaufhold says.

Kaufhold says Radiance has no direct competitors other than custom service providers that set up links specifically for moving files from place to place. The company does compete against Vivix and Pathfire for transporting completed files, but Radiance is designed specifically to help in transporting files that many people have to work on as part of a workflow, he says.

Radiance Application OnRamps are available for Adobe Creative Suite and Apple Final Cut Studio, and the company says it is working on plug-ins for other applications. Radiance also has application programming interfaces it can make available to those who want to write their own interfaces to its platform.

Plug-ins come bundled with Radiance’s Courier package, which costs $50 to $200 per user per month depending on the size of the system and number of users.