Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG and Oracle Corp are now ready to put some flesh on the bones of the video-on-demand collaboration they announced in April (CI No 2,638). The aim is to deliver highly scalable video servers to the emerging global market for multimedia services by putting Oracle’s multimedia software up on the Siemens Nixdorf and Pyramid Technology Corp families of Unix systems. Oracle already had a long-standing alliance with Pyramid, now a Siemens Nixdorf company. The Oracle Multimedia Server consists of two parts: application server and video server. The application server already runs on the RM family of systems. The next step is to develop a version that will run on the RM400 and RM1000 systems. The RM1000 is the Pyramid system architecture that combines the strengths of both symmetric multiprocessing and massively parallel processing. For applications that involve up to 300 video data streams, a cluster of RM400 systems can be used. The RM1000 covers applications involving several thousand parallel video data streams, says Siemens Nixdorf. The two companies also plan a number of interactive television and multimedia joint projects in a broad range of areas including computer-based training. These field trials are planned to begin by next quarter.
