February 8, 1995
Boston, Massachusetts
Conventional wisdom would say that allowing employees
to watch television on their desktop computer is counter
to traditional workplace productivity standards.
Financial traders, however, require real-time
information as it breaks in order to gain competitive
advantages in providing timely financial investment
consultation. As international news and business events
occur, world markets are impacted, and decisions that
affect billions of dollars of transactions are made based
on getting critical information fast.
On the Treasury trading floor at Bank of Boston,
reliance on cumbersome and expensive analog feeds for
world news and business was dramatically increasing
infrastructure costs to the trader desk.
Also, having an additional television monitor
inhibited viewing productivity, while consuming valuable
desktop real estate.
As a result, Stephen Scullen III, Director, Treasury
systems, Bank of Boston, evaluated distributed digital
video solutions directly to the desktop, and deployed
InSoft Network Television, INTV!.
"The criteria for meeting user satisfaction,
meaning my traders, is very strict," said Scullen.
"While we knew we could significantly cut costs by
averting analog feeds and consolidate data and video onto
one monitor, the video quality and reliability of the
product would be the deciding factor.
"The traders are very excited about INTV!
and believe it's a great product. We also have feeds to
several senior executive desktops, and it runs in our
reception area," said Scullen.
INTV! allows users to view video without
requiring an add-on video compression board, reducing the
overall cost per user desktop. Video streams are
decompressed using InSoft's Digital Video Everywhere
(DVE) open software architecture.
Scullen oversees the treasury systems trading floor
which includes 120 Sun Microsystems workstations running
over an Ethernet network.
"Our deployment has caught the interest of our
other trading floors, and they are looking closely at
this technology. A key advantage InSoft has in this area
and in the desktop conferencing market is their ability
to run across different desktop computers. This is
important to any enterprise like Bank of Boston,"
said Scullen.
InSoft is a worldwide leader in the technology and
sales of collaborative computing development tools, and
desktop conferencing and distributed digital video
applications. Its products are marketed directly to
commercial and government end-users, through leading
systems manufacturers and value-added resellers, for
applications such as financial services, computer-aided
design, engineering and exploration, telemedicine/health
care, entertainment, legal, telecommunications, and a
myriad of other information technology applications.
Bank of Boston Corporation (NYSE: BKB), with assets of
$44.3 billion as of September 30, 1994, is New England's
only global bank. Of all US banks, it has the 3rd-largest
network of international offices, with more than 100
offices in 24 countries. The Corporation and its
subsidiaries provide a broad range of financial services
to individual, corporate, institutional and governmental
customers, as well as other banks. The Corporation's
common and preferred stocks are listed on the New York
and Boston stock exchanges.
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