IBM and Marist College Team to Build Digital Media Infrastructure

Market Wire, May, 2003

Marist College and IBM today announced plans to build an interactive digital media infrastructure to provide online resources and tools to the university community.

Under the collaboration, IBM is supplying Marist with a combination of software, hardware and services to enable a digital media infrastructure that will support the creation, storage and exchange of digitized content via the Internet.

Marist plans to use the technology to implement a variety of new interactive online modules, including:

    - Linked and improved access to several digital media archives 
      currently housed at the school, including the Emmy Awards 
      Collection, FDR Library collection and college course 
      materials.
    - Web-based portals for team rooms, bulletin boards and instant 
      messaging.
    - Orientation materials for new faculty.
    - College credit bridge courses.

"The rapid evolution and convergence of digital data storage and rich media technologies is leading to a new generation of applications that will make it easier for people to manage and share information," said Nicholas M. Donofrio, senior vice president, technology and manufacturing for IBM. "Working with an outstanding partner like Marist College will enable us to test and enhance some of our most advanced digital media technologies and solutions in a real-world environment."

The Marist digital media project will utilize a number of new technologies developed by IBM Research, including:

    - Rich Media Distribution Utility (RMDU) -- a distributed 
      platform for creation, management, and distribution of Rich 
      Media applications and objects across a network to position 
      the content close to end users.
    - Enterprise Media Beans (EMBs) -- an open standard media 
      framework that allows a common view of rich media assets for 
      applications regardless of the underlying transport and 
      rendering vehicles, such as the streaming servers from 
      multiple vendors.
    - Xcast -- an approach to network multicasting that makes it 
      practical to have an unlimited number of small groups receive 
      broadcast data.  This is ideal for an environment in which a 
      large number of small groups, i.e. classes, require rich 
      synchronous communication tools without flooding the network.

"The ability to access and interact with content is an essential component of the teaching and learning process. These new technologies developed by IBM will provide us with opportunities to improve how professors teach and students learn. The results of this collaboration will be useful not only to the higher education community, but will also enhance the way corporations and government train and educate their employees," said Marist College President Dennis J. Murray.

IBM also is providing many standard products and technologies for the Marist digital media infrastructure, meaning that the base system can potentially be converted to support the online digital media requirements of other industries, such as storage and retrieval of Computer Automated Design data in the electronics industry or print and video content for an advertising agency.

The infrastructure will be built around Digital Media Delivery Solution (DMDS) developed by IBM and Cisco Systems. DMDS is an integrated solution that enables enterprises to deliver digital media, including live video, building on existing network infrastructure. This integrated solution is delivered in a stand-alone rack that includes hardware and software to create, distribute, and manage rich digital media information and services. DMDS integrates Cisco Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) with IBM DB2 Content Manager, WebSphere Portal Server and Rich Media Distribution Utility to address the changing requirements of Marist's environment.

IBM is supporting the Marist College digital media project through a Shared University Research award. The project also will be supported by IBM software technologies, including WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database and DB2 Content Manager, which are made available to Marist faculty and researchers via the IBM Scholars university product portal.

IBM's Shared University Research (SUR) program awards computing equipment (servers, storage systems, personal computing products, etc.) and services to colleges, universities and institutions of higher education around the world to facilitate research projects in areas of mutual interest, including: Life Sciences, Grid Computing, Autonomic Computing and Deep Computing. The SUR awards also support the advancement of university projects by connecting top researchers in academia with IBM Research personnel, along with representatives from product development and solution provider communities. IBM awards approximately 50 SUR grants per year worldwide.