Sonic Foundry, Inc

Army has expanded access to the Mediasite platform, webcasting training and certification for soldiers and their families

MADISON, Wis. - Sonic Foundry, Inc.(NASDAQ: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, today announced the company's Mediasite platform has achieved a series of certifications to meet the Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP) requirements for deployment on secure military networks. These certifications include the Authority to Operate (ATO) and the Certificate of Net-Worthiness (CoN) encompassing the Mobile Recorders and Mediasite server platform and software. Mediasite is the first and only fully automated rich media webcasting platform to earn these certifications.

The company received the ATO certification for its Mediasite Recorder after making modifications to adapt to the stringent security requirements required when placing technology on the Army network.

The process of completing each certification included intensive security checks of both the operating system and the Mediasite Recorder set forth by the Department of the Army to get permissions to run on its network. Together, earning the certifications of ATO and CoN took almost two years. Now that the Mediasite platform is fully accredited, it can be plugged into the Army network and used by military personnel anywhere.

One of the Army's biggest uses of Mediasite is online on-demand training. More than 700 training segments were developed during the pilot phase and that number is increasing. A multi-media content creation team works with instructors one-on-one to tailor online courses into condensed modules, reducing the amount of time a student has to sit in front of a computer.

Mediasite has also been used extensively to capture high level conference and working group sessions, which are available on-demand for those unable to attend the event. Having the ability to review general officer and staff level briefings and discussions are critical in keeping programs, acquisition strategies and changes within the force on track.

As the Army's Mediasite deployment broadens, Sonic Foundry's goal is to put more innovative uses into place and bring the many benefits to rich media capture and content webcasting to this branch of the military. Future applications include Connecting Soldiers to Digital Apps (CSDA) with vodcasts, and converting technical manuals into digital documents with webcasts using embedded Mediasite Players.

"Sonic Foundry is excited to bring the benefits of webcasting - already experienced by higher education institutions and corporations worldwide - to a new government segment capable of vast training expansion and achievement with this technology," said Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO of Sonic Foundry. "Mediasite has been used in the past to webcast family messages to soldiers overseas, but we're happy to enable a more formal use of the rich media platform within the armed forces."