FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAN RAMON, CA, March 2, 2004 - The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) today announced that it will sponsor the upcoming ViDe Workshop on ITU-T H.350, which will commence immediately following the 6th Annual ViDe/SURA Digital Video Workshop. The Video Development Initiative (ViDe) is offering a one-day workshop on the new ITU-T H.350 "Directory Services Architecture for Multimedia Conferencing" standard ratified in August 2003 by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T).

"Until now, evolving a video- and voice service meant hopping from one proprietary management solution to another, and retooling the business process each time. We finally have a tool that addresses how enterprises and service providers can safely manage large numbers of video- and voice over IP users and endpoints," said Tyler Miller Johnson, network engineer for ViDeNet, the world's largest video over IP network - connecting hundreds of universities globally. "Our experiences building ViDeNet demonstrated the centrality of the directory and the need for a formal international standard in this area."

ViDe played a key role in the development of this new standard. This standard describes a lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) schema that stores information about the IETF SIP, ITU-T H.323 and H.320-compliant and even proprietary voice and video endpoints. The architecture makes it easy to look up users' video and voice addresses, and allows the enterprise to provide white pages, configuration, user-management and authorization services all out of the same directory. This integration of business process reduces the overall cost of operating services.

The ITU-T H.350 standard is relatively simple to implement. The March workshop is designed to provide engineers and network administrators the know-how to plan for, implement and deploy ITU-T H.350-compliant products. It is a unique opportunity for developers of real-time IP communications to get first-hand information from world authorities on this promising new tool.

The workshop will take place on Thursday, March 25th, 2004, at University Place Conference Center and Hotel at IUPUI, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The reception will take place on the preceding evening at the same venue. Indiana University Purdue University Indiana in Indianapolis is the home of the Network Operations Center (NOC) for the Abilene Network, an Internet2 high-performance backbone network that supports the development of real-time and rich media communications applications, as well as advanced networking capabilities such as IPv6.

The registration fee for corporate and commercial attendees is $350 and $250 for academic and research network attendees. To learn more about the Workshop, visit www.vide.net/conferences/h350 or send e-mail to .

About the IMTC
The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is an industry-leading non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, encourage, and facilitate the development and implementation of interoperable multimedia conferencing solutions based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. Over the past three years the IMTC has hosted more than 20 interoperability-testing events to test H.323, 3G-324M, SIP, T.120, H.320, and Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from Cisco Systems, Dilithium Networks, Emblaze Systems, France Telecom, Level 3 Communications, MediaDigm Technology, Nextreaming Corp., Nokia, Nortel Networks, Polycom, RADVISION, Siemens AG, Sony, and Tandberg. The San Ramon, California-based consortium comprises approximately 70 member organizations from around the globe. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. "The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime." Further information on IMTC can be found at http://www.imtc.org

About ViDe
ViDe promotes the deployment of digital video in research and higher education. Leveraging collective resources and expertise, ViDe advances digital video deployment through promotion and development of interoperable, standardized, and cost-effective technologies. ViDe was founded by representatives from universities and education networks; ViDe members today include those interested in improving and deploying scalable, standards-based digital video architecture and services for use in research and higher education. ViDe workshops bring the latest developments in digital video services for higher education. http://www.vide.net