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Company and Technology Summary

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Company and Technology Summary

Introduction

Three years ago, the founding

members of Iformata

Communications embarked to

create an automated video

communication management

system, making complex video

meetings as simple as a phone call

in an era where this had never

been done before. After selling

their previous venture to

publically traded Polycom

Corporation of California, where

they patented the first telepresence

technology and founded a new industry (see the neighboring image), the inventors focused their efforts

on building infrastructure that nests at the core of converged networks, providing back office controls

for enterprise video systems. The product portfolio and platform was initially announced in 2009 at the

time when the first patent filings were made with the United States Patent Office. In 2010, the first

customers began using this automated system in a production environment, and the patent portfolio

was expanded to 450 individual claims across two patents.

Overview

The infrastructure at the core works like an automated telephone

switch, connecting A to B (or many to many) except with 50 to 100

times the complexity. This “complexity” is the reason this solution

hasn’t been created by now and offered in the open market by many

competitors. The platform is called VNOC Symphony® and is currently

used worldwide by many notable firms such as Zurich Financial, Cisco,

Figure 1. Destiny Conferencing sold its technology, patent portfolio, and manufacturing

facility to Polycom which became its telepresence division for RPX and TPX products.

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Charles Schwab, Polycom, Sodexo, Saban Univision, Merck, Willis Financial, Fluor, Norfolk Southern and

others. VNOC Symphony solution is available as: (a) a hosted solution, allowing users to power their

video technology using infrastructure provided and maintained by Iformata personnel (we refer to this

as hosted services); this is similar to a telephone switch in a telco facility (like a 5ESS switch), powering

phones in their communities. Customers pay a monthly recurring fee for this service based on the level

of service and quantity of endpoints powered in their enterprise. (b) the solution which may be

purchased as hardware and installed directly into a customer’s environment as a product; this is similar

to a company installing a Cisco CallManager into their offices. A CapEx fee/purchase is associated with

this investment (instead of a MRC) along with annual licensing and maintenance contract obligations.

Traditional Concierge Services

Today all providers of managed video

services (VNOC services) employ skilled

operators to setup video calls using

highly complex steps or rules that are

prone to error. In the neighboring

image, notice the Iformata VNOC center

that performs these steps to ensure a

customer’s meeting is setup properly

prior to the meeting’s start time. This

process is not easily scaleable, neither

for Iformata nor for our competitors,

and, until now, there’s been no

automated solution. Surprisingly all VNOC service providers around the world have this same problem –

staffing VNOC facilities with operators that use manual and extensive processes to setup meetings every

day… a resource intensive effort that makes managed video services costly for the user.

Automating High Definition Video Meetings

By automating the process, Iformata has been able to substantially reduce the cost of meeting

management while vastly improving quality controls, consistently and predictably. Users can setup their

own meetings using buttons on their favorite tools like the Apple iPhone, the Blackberry, Google’s

Android, Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and more. These tools appear as interfaces to the VNOC

Symphony platform, and the platform processes the user’s request in real-time, turning on video

systems around the world, deciding the best layout for participants to view, and managing real-time

changes as they are happening, adding and deleting participants as they arrive and leave the meeting

throughout the session. It’s like having a full broadcast network behind the entire meeting production,

making decisions real-time, except with automated predefined decisions from a library of scenarios to

be applied to any combination of events.

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The VNOC Symphony Platform

Built on a web-oriented architecture, VNOC Symphony’s framework easily interacts with current and

emerging interface technologies for ubiquitous and mobile real-time access of any meeting resource.

Symphony provides users the option of scheduling meetings or requesting an immediate conference

with no prior notice requirement (see the scheduling tool). Users select the region on the left window

which displays available video systems in the middle window in that region. The user can select any

available video room (personal video system, room video system, or large scale telepresence system) by

dragging the image into the right scheduler pane – that’s all that’s needed.

This process is supported from many interfaces, including Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, an intuitive

web interface, an animated Microsoft Silverlight interface, Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, Apple iPad,

and others being developed. Using these interfaces, users can

select rooms for their conference. For example, launching a ten

city conference would require a traditional VNOC 15 to 30

minutes of setup time. Using VNOC Symphony, the user quickly

selects the cities from a list of available rooms, and watches the

conference sites appear automatically by the VNOC Symphony

service in a fraction of the time.

At the heart of the platform is a runbook engine called VNOC

Conductor which polices meeting setup, maintenance, and

[ “We found VNOC Symphony to be

the most unique, powerful, and full

featured tool in the industry for

enterprise management.” ]

Wayne McAllister

Senior Vice President, Cisco

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teardown in an enterprise environment according to an organization’s process or runbook rules.

Numerous parameters are configurable to ensure departmental or global directives are followed,

including setup times, startup messaging, teardown messaging, in-progress meeting modification

messaging, custom messaging, remedial functions, escalation processes, email and SMS notifications,

charge-backs, conflict management, and many others processes that regulate a complex enterprise

deployment.

Business process and implementation logic compiles into runbook processes during Iformata’s customer

on-boarding phase. Iformata works with stakeholders within the organization to integrate current

business practices with Iformata’s VNOC processes that are specific to the organization. VNOC

Symphony stores these processes to follow conference reservation, conference management, fault

management and impromptu meeting practices that match the needs of the organization.

Numerous tools are available to users and

administrators in the form of widgets, which are

interactive web-services that communicate with

VNOC Symphony’s framework. Each widget

provides a unique toolset, such as the reservation

widget, the helpdesk widget, the reporting

widget, and many others. A Digital Airlines

widget plots live conferences on a geo-spatial

interactive map, showing all connected meetings

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graphically. Users may pan and zoom the map from world view to

street level, even showing multiple video systems interconnected on a

campus network in close proximity.

In the near future, Iformata will be releasing the information

necessary for corporations to write their own widgets and share this

technology with other companies, rapidly growing the base of tools

available for video management. This is a first in this industry that we

hope will help both small and large businesses meet their unique and

precise needs.

A full featured reservation widget allows users to see photographs of

each meeting room, add participants to each site, choose MCU

framing, view time zones of each location, and modify in-progress

meetings, among other features. An express scheduler widget lets

users quickly create a reservation with as few keystrokes as possible,

listing the last ten meetings and ten sites as possible quick start

selections. A meet-now widget enables users to request immediate

video services for sites selected, whether by web interface or mobile

application.

VNOC Symphony is available in a hosted environment per user

subscription and device registration process and is also available as a

standalone solution for purchase and installation into an enterprise

organization.

VNOC Producer: the virtual wizard

When a customer makes a conference request using an interface (i.e.

such as an Apple iPhone application), VNOC Producer agent executes

those requests from VNOC Symphony, governing the transaction

according to a flexible process environment, managing both

infrastructure and endpoints, providing automated meeting

connections for accurate, repeatable, and immediate conference

choreography.

VNOC Producer provides numerous capabilities to a company’s fleet of

video systems, including call setup, call maintenance, call teardown,

pre- and post-meeting messaging, in-meeting messaging, video

framing, custom triggered messaging, in-progress meeting

modification and reframing, automated ticket creation, performance

tracking, automated site sweeping, and many other functions. The

system supports sole or mixed endpoints by Tandberg, Polycom and

“VNOC Symphony has been

deployed to our users over the last

few months. With video systems

in thirty different countries, we

finally have a powerful, full

featured and integrated platform

that meets the needs of different

cultures in different time zones.”

Loren Cunningham, Founder

University of the Nations

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LifeSize, and it supports infrastructure by Tandberg and

Polycom, managing port availability across multiple MCUs

making resource allocation transparent to user requests.

The logic in VNOC Producer is a well implemented process

instructed by VNOC Conductor℠, the communication hub and

process implementation logic that VNOC Symphony

encapsulates. Based on these network engines, VNOC Producer

understands how to filter and manage both routine and highly

unique situations. For example, consider the use case where a

user launches an impromptu, unscheduled meeting. When

permitted by an organization’s stakeholder through the VNOC

Conductor process environment, VNOC Producer can override

the meeting when necessary by politely placing on-screen messages at each impromptu endpoint,

naming the conference requestor that requests the override. The current conference is given a few

minutes to complete their meeting while VNOC Producer notifies users, preparing for teardown and

immediate reconnection of each endpoint into its scheduled override conference.

VNOC Producer, as part of the VNOC Symphony platform, provides the first ubiquitous toolset in the

industry to offer fully automated VNOC services to organizations, regardless of their size.

[“Within seconds from pressing the

submit button, VNOC Producer launches

and frames video and telepresence

endpoints. With traditional VNOC

services, a large meeting might have

taken at least 15 to 30 minutes for setup

and call launching. But with VNOC

Producer, meeting requests are almost

immediately executed.”]

Thomas Berry Jr.

Chief Executive, Verrex

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The VNOC Symphony platform and its associated tools are available through Iformata channels and

partners. VNOC Symphony redefines VNOC services from the ground up, creating a framework of

interacting web-services within a service-oriented architecture. This enables users many ways to view

the same information, launch impromptu meetings, or schedule large conferences.