Turn Your Software Application into a Global Conference Room

Why You Should Get on Board

Collaborative computing and desktop conferencing stimulates productivity, group communications and teamwork by bringing people together on a network.

It is designed to shorten your product development cycle, enabling you to get higher quality products to market faster. In the long run it ultimately saves your customers money, while lowering your own cost of doing business and leveraging existing information systems investments.

MDL's OpenDVE is an application development toolkit that opens up the world of collaborative computing and desktop conferencing to you and your customers. From industry analysts to the investment firms on Wall Street, one message is consistent: the desktop conferencing industry will be measured in the billions of dollars by the end of the decade.

MDL's OpenDVE gives you the time-to-market advantage of delivering collaborative computing and desktop conferencing solutions while shielding you from the "obsolescence risks" associated with emerging technologies.

It gives you a substantiated value proposition to present to your customers and prospects while allowing you to clearly differentiate yourself from your competitors. The time is now to embrace the global advantage of collaborative computing and desktop conferencing and partner with a worldwide leader such as MDL.

Tell Me About OpenDVE and Why I Should Invest

Now in its 4th generation software release, OpenDVE is based on MDL's Digital Video Everywhere (DVE) software architecture which enables:

• Collaboration between multiple desktop systems including 486- and Pentium-class PCs running Windows; Sun and SPARC-compatible, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and Silicon Graphics workstations

• Transparent network connectivity across Ethernet, Token Ring, ATM, Frame Relay, FDDI, ISDN, T1, T3, and SMDS

• Audio/Video interoperability using a multi-algorithm software CODEC design, between compression standards such as Indeo, JPEG, H.261, H.320, CellB, DVE2, and G.711/728

Designed for heterogeneous environments, DVE's open software architecture addresses complex enterprise infrastructure requirements, unlike the vast majority of other desktop conferencing vendors who are restricted to 1 platform, network and video compression standard. MDL 's DVE architecture eliminates "obsolescence risks" associated with rapidly changing technologies and standards that impact desktop collaboration and conferencing. It protects programming investment while leveraging existing infrastructure investment and providing a seamless upgrade path as new infrastructures, such as broadband networks, are put into place.

OpenDVE is an application development toolkit that enables developers to build full collaborative capabilities native to their applications. The Toolkit includes a robust suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) providing the programmer with a platform- and subsystem-independent set of system services that allow collaborative functionality in an interoperable manner.

Before the release of OpenDVE, developing collaborative applications was extremely complicated, let alone writing an application to interoperate across several hardware and network environments. A developer would have to master low-level functions of the operating systems, network interfaces, and audio and video subsystems.

OpenDVE interfaces are straightforward and intuitive. With a relatively short learning curve, the application programmer can add collaborative features to existing applications or create totally new collaborative or conferencing applications.

MDL's Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) provides for a seamless digital convergence environment, enabling you to write distributed multimedia applications that run transparently and interoperable across packet, telephony, and cell networks. It is state-of-the-art in distributed multimedia networking technology. NAL and the OpenDVE interfaces protect you from the complexity of:

• Low-level network programming
• Establishing conferences and managing membership
• Handling data and event distribution
• Providing clipboard functionality
• Integrating diverse networks
• Integrating diverse industry standard video and audio components

You can focus on the value-add of the specific application, not on recreating the basic functionality of collaborative computing.

OpenDVE developers can also write and market custom modules, or Plugins, for their applications or MDL Communique! licensed users. Plugins provide enhanced functionality to the developers OpenDVE-enabled collaborative and conferencing application, and can be integrated into installed Communique! conference users.

Examples of OpenDVE-based Plugins include enhanced image capture and viewing modules for telemedicine and CAD applications, automated Help modules for customer support applications, speed dial "Hoot-n-Holler" modules for trading and financial applications, and remote camera control for executive conferencing environments.

MDL's Communique! modules such as the Shared WhiteBoard, Chat Tool, Communique!TV, Audio Tool and Video Tool are also Plugins. They are available for licensing and resale by the OpenDVE Developer, as a customer feature or extension to their application.

For you and your customer, you can be assured that your investment in MDL today will be protected and remain state-of-the-art in the future. The OpenDVE collaborative architecture eliminates "obsolescence risks" associated with emerging technologies and represents the most standards-compliant architecture on the market.

• Who Is MDL?
• The OpenDVE Developer Program
• Industry Awards