VBrick Systems, the world leader in digital video systems and solutions, today announced that ABN Amro - the 13th largest international bank - has selected VBrick to stream live news to its Netherlands financial dealing room.
ABN AMRO is using VBrick and systems integrator Inside Technology BV to deliver breaking news to desktops and video monitors at Europe's largest dealing room, which supports 750 ABN AMRO financial traders.
Financial service institutions require up-to-the-minute news to capitalize on new investment opportunities quickly and serve clients effectively. VBrick network video appliances enable ABN AMRO to stream multiple cable television channels, such as Bloomberg, BBC, and Reuters to the desktop - thereby simplifying access to important market information and eliminating barriers to timely, effective communications.
"Successful global banking and financial services are based on strategic economic analysis, timely information, and predicting financial community reactions to events that impact global markets and economies," said Andrew Howard, director of marketing, VBrick Systems, Inc. "Live digital video news to the desktop provides another resource for informed, real-time decision making. VBrick empowers organizations to deliver live DVD-quality video to the desktop without impacting network performance."
In addition to ABN AMRO, ING Bank and the Van Lanschot Bank in the Netherlands have equipped their dealing rooms with VBrick network video appliances. VBrick network video appliances receive feeds from financial cable networks such as CNBC, then digitize and stream the programming to networked PCs or televisions across organizations' Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Approximately the size of a dictionary, VBrick network video appliances provide reliable "plug and stream" capabilities across IP networks.
Internet streaming bandwidth requirements can consume significant network resources, slowing mission-critical application performance. VBrick enables global organizations to sidestep network video bandwidth challenges by using multicasting technology to enable an unlimited number of IP networked users to view a video stream, while only requiring the bandwidth of a single stream.
ABN AMRO is using VBrick's network video appliances to stream cable television broadcasts in MPEG-4 format, which allows for sub second delivery of news to the desktop. By supporting multiple digital video standards, VBrick enables users to focus on business requirements for digital video, rather than the underlying technologies. VBrick also enables organizations to add new applications such as video on demand and webcasting easily, and also expand their digital video capabilities internationally to remote branch offices.