ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VBrick Systems, Inc., a world leader in digital video appliances and solutions, today introduced VBrick Video Plug-in for Lotus Sametime, the first product that streams live broadcasts and on-demand digital video content within the IBM Lotus Sametime environment. The VBrick product expands unified communications for Lotus Sametime by providing users with a single point of access to digital video broadcast content and stored programming throughout a global organization.

The VBrick Video Plug-in for Lotus Sametime centralizes live and stored digital content from multiple sources into a single, enterprise-wide program listing that Lotus Sametime users can access quickly and easily. Now, for example, brokers can watch breaking financial market news from MSNBC or quickly view compliance training videos or recent CEO presentations from an organization’s digital video library.

VBrick removes complexity by enabling users to view multiple videos simultaneously and also supports multiple video formats – MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Windows Media. Importantly, the VBrick Video Plug-in also provides a Priority Alert/Emergency Broadcast capability that pops-up live video on Lotus Sametime desktops under the control of an administrator.

“IBM is making it easy for businesses to find, reach and collaborate with others through unified communications and collaboration,” said Bruce Morse, vice president of unified communications and collaboration, IBM Lotus. “Adding live broadcasts and on-demand video capabilities to Lotus Sametime, illustrates how active IBM PartnerWorld members, such as VBrick, are innovating new features that increase efficiencies and information access for our users,” said Morse.

“The VBrick Video Plug-in for Lotus Sametime empowers businesses to increase productivity by adding live streaming and on-demand video access seamlessly throughout their Lotus Sametime environment,” said Rich Mavrogeanes, founder and chief technology officer, VBrick Systems, Inc. “VBrick is driving today’s Streaming 2.0 environment by providing cost-effective products and solutions that enable users to take advantage of live video across the globe and easily view stored content to capitalize on an organization’s combined resources to improve productivity and foster innovation,” said Mavrogeanes.

VBrick Video Plug-in for Lotus Sametime is centrally deployed and managed to eliminate complexity for users. Flexible management enables the VBrick Program Listings feature to include digital video content from multiple sources, making relevant content easy to find and use. The VBrick Program Listings can also include Web page links to provide users with dynamic social media reference capabilities.

Users can personalize their VBrick Program Listings to include live broadcast programming from VBrick appliances, VBrick’s EtherneTV Portal Server, and corporate video library listings from a company Web site via an XML file. Users can also have video files automatically open in a selected video player. For example, users can watch CNN streams in the default Windows Media Player and older on-demand programming in MPEG-2. Alternately, Linux and Mac users may launch QuickTime for MPEG-4 video f