PCWG and IMTC join forces; organizations combine strengths for the benefit of conferencing users

Business Wire, Dec 12, 1995

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 12, 1995--The Personal Conferencing Work Group Inc. (PCWG) and the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium Inc. (IMTC) today announce that they have agreed to merge their efforts into a single organization.

The merger of the two groups will benefit conferencing and desktop computer users worldwide by creating one strong organization that will focus on bringing new levels of interoperability, functionality and value to conferencing products and services.

"Both partners bring tremendous assets to the unified organization," says Neil Starkey, co-founder of DataBeam, and president of IMTC. "The market development strengths of the PCWG, combined with the success the IMTC has had in bringing together industry players in support of open conferencing standards make the merger a win-win for all involved."

"The end goals of the PCWG and the IMTC have become increasingly aligned in the past year," says Al Korenjak of Intel, and chairman of PCWG. "The interests of our customers, our members, and the entire multimedia communications and personal conferencing industry will be well served by this unification, which allows us all to progress even more quickly toward achieving our shared goal of providing compatible conferencing solutions to the end user ."

"The merger of the two organizations is good for the industry," says Elliot Gold of TeleSpan Publishing Corp. "Customers will benefit from the collective efforts of the vendors involved in the new group. The members themselves benefit since they can now more effectively focus their market development and standards definition activities through this combined organization."

The merged organization, which will be known as the IMTC Inc., will bring a sharpened focus to addressing interoperability issues faced by users. Members of the IMTC will continue their interoperability testing efforts, as well as their contributions toward completion of standards and guidelines for conferencing implementations.

Through its formal liaison with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the IMTC will work to support the completion of standards for audio/video conferencing over standard phone lines (H.324), audio/video transmission over local area networks (H.323), including gateways to wide area networks, as well as extensions to the T.120 standards for multipoint data conferencing.

The IMTC will maintain open and active dialogue with other standards and industry organizations, including the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the MultiMedia Communications Forum (MMCF).

Input from Users Increases

"The merger of the PCWG and IMTC is great news for users of conferencing products," says Ray Sollars, network applications manager at Boeing, and a member of both the independent Desktop Users Group (D-TUG) and the User Advisory Council (UAC). "It is gratifying to see these organizations coming together. We welcome the opportunity to expand our dialogue with this group of the industry's leading vendors."

The 21 members of the UAC, formed this autumn by the PCWG, represent a broad cross section of the business, financial, health care and academic communities. All are responsible for the implementation of conferencing solutions within their organizations. They will continue to provide direct user input to vendors involved in the newly expanded IMTC Inc.

All members of the unified IMTC, including participants in the User Advisory Council, will meet together for the first time at the IMTC Spring Forum, May 1-3, 1996 in Boston. Business and technical sessions of interest to both customers and vendors alike will be included in the three-day event.

"The industry has come together in the past year around a set of open, international standards," says Starkey. "The next step is to continue to broaden our partnerships with users in order to accelerate the development of applications that can truly deliver the benefits of conferencing into the mainstream of business communications."

"We're excited about the opportunities," Korenjak concludes. "Involving users during the early stages of market development provides customers a unique opportunity to influence the direction of product and infrastructure planning. In addition, IMTC member companies will receive valuable feedback throughout the crucial stages of developing standards, creating interoperable products, and identifying and responding to barriers to widespread deployment of conferencing solutions."

The 90 Voting Members and 120 Observers of the unified IMTC represent companies based in 18 countries, and represent a broad cross section of vendors from the conferencing, communications and desktop computing industries. The IMTC welcomes dialogue with all parties interested in accelerating the deployment of interoperable, multi-vendor conferencing solutions.

More information about the IMTC may be obtained by visiting the group's World Wide Web site at http://www.imtc.org/imtc, or by calling 510/743-4451.