A somewhat unlikely triumvirate of investors – network maven Cisco, database specialist Informix, and the VC arm of Japanese trade show and magazine powerhouse Softbank – have invested a total of $10m in high-quality video for Internet and corporate Intranet specialist VXtreme, based in Palo Alto. The three each secure a minority share in the year-old start-up, plus seats on the board. VXtreme claims video applications such as on-line training, executive speeches to the desktop, video news services, and new customer service capabilities are taking the Internet to a new level of content and communication. The war chest will help establish Vxtreme as the standard for video on the Internet, according to its grateful president and CEO Pete Mountanos. The company’s Web Theater software family (Web Theater Server, Web Theater Client, and Web Theater Producer) offers video and integration with other on- screen HTML page elements capabilities, and supports both Microsoft’s ActiveX and Netscape’s LiveMedia. Each of the three new uncles plans to integrate Web Theater with their current products. Cisco is making sure it works with its own Internetworking Operating Services software, Informix is creating a DataBlade for its Universal Server object-relational dbms, and Softbank will be using Web Theater in its trade show operations (for example, the next Comdex may offer live ‘Webcasts’ using the technology). The news comes as VXtreme and desktop video broadcasting rival Precept have agreed to cross-license compression/decompression algorithms and resource reservation protocols: the love-fest motivated by the noble aim of enhancing one another’s products (read, increase the fledgling market to both parties’ advantage). VXtreme was founded in 1995 by a team of video compression, networking, and multimedia database experts from Stanford University, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Sybase.
