Guard makes e-learning advance

The Army National Guard announced Nov. 19 that it has selected three vendors to provide solutions to encode, distribute and manage digital media for the Guard's Distributive Training Technology Project.

The companies are Artesia Technologies Inc., Inktomi Corp. and Virage Inc.

Established in 1995, the DTTP is a federal training project that offers e-learning programs to Guard members in classrooms across the country, said Susan Dix, chief technology officer for the DTTP.

Its technology foundation is the Guard Content Management System, for which the Army National Guard has selected solutions for capturing, encoding, distributing, logging, storing and managing live and on-demand video.

Dix said that providing secure and reliable online training to Guard members is a "critical component" of the program, and "with the support of...Artesia, Inktomi and Virage, we have assembled a proven team to help us meet this requirement."

The companies' specific roles in the project are as follows:

* Artesia's Teams solution will function as a back-end digital media repository for managing multiple types of media. It will also support front-end applications, such as learning management systems and media portals.

* Inktomi's Content Networking Platform will be used to deliver live and on-demand video training content to more than 280 classrooms in its initial phase, and the company's content networking software will distribute and store this information close to users for delivery.

* Virage's SmartEncode Suite will provide automated capturing, encoding and indexing capabilities for on-demand video. All the technologies support the Defense Department's Sharable Content Object Reference Model, an Extensible Markup Language-based standard for ensuring the interoperability of educational content regardless of access device.