Altus launches YouTube-like search for videos inside companies

Remember exactly what happened in your last business meeting? Probably not.

A Campbell, Calif.-based company called Altus says it can change that with a video search engine called vSearch that it’s launching today for enterprises. With the cost of video recording and storage services falling, it’s becoming cheaper for companies to film internal meetings or events. The real problem is how to sort and index that information for later use (like determining whether an action item was handled in a specific meeting).

Altus’ vSearch makes videos searchable down to the word or exact PowerPoint slide. The company can sort videos that companies hand over directly, or it can go out and record and transcribe the content for customers. (Chief executive Ted Cocheu said the company has humans transcribe events rather than speech recognition technology because it needs to be accurate for business and legal reasons.)

Altus can make the videos available through iTunes, Microsoft Outlook or other RSS readers. It is also putting together an event service that includes live webcasting, and has signed up some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s larger tech companies like Oracle, IBM and Cisco.

When it was first founded in 1998, Altus sent people out to record corporate events. Because of that, the company’s been profitable for more than 10 years and is self-funding vSearch, said Mark Pollard, Altus’ vice president of marketing and business development.

For access to vSearch, Altus charges $2 per month for every user. However, if a company wants Altus to produce and transcribe content as well, that cost can range from $1,000 to $3,000 per hour.

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