Ralph Ungermann’s new company, First Virtual Corp, Santa Clara has unveiled its first products and signed an agreement with Conner Peripherals Inc to build the first Asynchronous Transfer Mode media servers. First Virtual claims to have the first media operating system, first interactive media server for workgroups and the first low cost Asynchronous Mode network to the desktop. The First Virtual Media Operating System is designed to take full advantage of the real-time capabilities of Asynchronous Transfer Mode and provide interactive services for audio, facsimile, video and data applications, and is designed to augment existing network operating systems such as Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT, Notes and NetWare, and multimedia applications with multimedia and networking capabilities. It provides a set of interactive network services to play back, record, edit and direct multimedia files and objects over an Asynchronous Mode network. Interactive services can be incorporated into applications or services through Object Linking & Emebedding object libraries or through standard Video for Windows application programming interfaces. The First Virtual Media Server is an interactive, media server providing high quality, two-way video, audio and image communications over Asynchronous Transfer, and results from the relationship with Conner. It is a network-attached device that embeds real-time storage and retrieval into the network, enabling workgroup users to store and share large streams of multimedia data. It supports the MPEG, JPEG and Indeo video formats, and is designed to provide transparent access to both audio and video files from Windows and Video for Windows. In its initial incarnation, it supplies over 8Gb of RAID storage for audio, video and flat files, and will support up to 80 simultaneous users at a stream speed of up to 155Mbps. An unlimited number of users can be supported for multicast applications. It ties into Asynchronous Transfer Mode workgroups through a 100Mbps or 155Mbps direct interface to the Asynchronous Mode switch. And the company claims the first low-cost Asynchronous Transfer Mode network to the desktop, consisting of a stackable workgroup media switch and intelligent Asynchronous Mode personal computer adaptor, at $500 to $800 per user. This is the part of the offerings that was developed with Advanced Telecommunications Modules Ltd of Cambridge. The First Virtual family will be out in December and the operating system is $2,000 for 10 user sessions, $12,000 for 100 user sessions. The First Virtual Media Server is $20,000 for 8Gb, $15,000 for 4Gb. The Media Switch goes from $3,400 to $8,000 and the Media Adaptor from $330 to $1,200. Conner supplies the RAID disk subsystem and has the option to distribute the media server.
