Ignite Technologies this week unveiled Ignite Communicator Service, a file delivery service that the company describes as a “digital FedEx.”
Customers upload large files to Ignite’s data center for delivery to connected and occasionally connected users anywhere on the Internet. The files – PowerPoint presentations, video, audio, software updates – are delivered to users in a “polite” manner, meaning they’re downloaded in the background without affecting the use of the machine pulling down the file. Deliveries can span multiple connections, so if a user goes offline in the middle of a download, Ignite will pick up where it left off, says John Rothwell, Ignite’s president. A system tray message alerts users when the download is complete.
The service also looks to make deliveries more efficient by using local copies of a file as download source. If a user in a small branch office downloads a file and a second and third user in the office attempt to do the same, they will get a copy from the first user’s PC, saving bandwidth on the WAN. Users need to have a small application on their machine to use the service.
Despite just going public with the technology, Ignite has been working on its service for the past four years and already has a number of customers under its belt. The sales training departing in Canon’s Imaging System Group (ISG) is using Ignite to deliver training videos and presentations to some 8,000 dealers around the globe, says Mitch Bardwell, the group’s director.
Prior to using Ignite, Bardwell’s group would distribute information by mailing out CDs. Now dealers can get information directly from the ISG’s “Learning Zone,” an e-learning portal that ties into a learning management system.
Ignite’s ability to do automatic version control is also a high point for Bardwell. ISG sends out a big PowerPoint presentation twice a year to a large sales channel that covers the division’s entire product line of copiers, scanners and fax machines. “You can imagine how that changes,” Bardwell says. With Ignite, every time a change is made to a file, it automatically pushes it to all those who downloaded it originally “without them having to do anything. It does it in the background out of the system tray and pops up, ‘Here is a new version.’”
Ignite delivers video using a proprietary format and digital rights management technology. The stream is encrypted and played from an encrypted state on the local drive. Customers can either upload standard video files to Ignite or send in tapes for conversion. Bardwell says there’s about a 24-hour turnaround on materials he sends in.
The Ignite Communicator service is targeted at larger deployments of more than 1,000 seats and is priced at $120 per seat annually.
