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What's your most exciting project on the horizon?
Schummer: We're trying to build a scalable engine to handle the variety of patent transactions that is expandable in any direction, vertical or horizontal. We're trying to build the infrastructure so we can take this engine out of the entertainment-related sphere we're operating in now. We want to become the patent pool engine that is the mother of all patent pool engines.
Millett: In figuring out [how to design the engine for] this pool, you walk into a room with a blank sheet of paper. For a particular pool, what do you think the standards are? What standards would cover the majority of new pools?
There will always be exceptions, but if we can reduce the number of exceptions, that would be great. With Dolby it's actually easier because the consumer division controls the licensing terms. There are finite permutations. With Via, terms are reinvented every time.
Schummer: At Via we're an administrator. The patent owners control our lives; they're very protective of their intellectual property. It's a little bit like herding cats.
What's your biggest worry?
Millett: The biggest worry I have is resources. Via is one of many customers that IT has.
Schummer: We're not the biggest, but hopefully someday ... [Knocks on the wooden conference table.]
Millett: It's difficult across the company to get everyone to agree on what are the most important projects. I get a lot of requests to stop and "Do my thing right now," and we can't do that. Last year, IT had 170 projects. The IT department is 52 people, including the help desk and the network group. We have maybe 30 developers.
Trying to figure out how to divvy up the resources is a challenge. Each business unit can tell you what its most important challenge is, but it's very difficult for us to get everybody in the corporation to agree what the most important projects across the board are.
So we've put together something called the Business Infrastructure Steering Committee. But the way it really works is that everyone still comes in and fights for themselves. In the face of no decision or a fuzzy decision, it falls to IT to decide what's important. If it's really important, we'll figure out how to do it. I don't want to derail things.
Schummer: My worry is resources. If the one guy in IT who knows about Via security gets hit by a truck, we're up a creek. Via has 17 full-time positions, heading to 50. It's a chicken-and-egg thing. If we get the [patent] pools, we'll need more infrastructure. If we get the infrastructure, we'll get the pools.
Millett: We don't want to be an anchor holding Via back. We like to be able to support it at the clip it needs, at the speed at which pools come onboard. Outsourcing isn't a good option. The Web-based patent pool interface is a customized application; you need our licensing accountants to figure out how the [revenue] recognition is going to work. It's a lot of internal work on top of that engine. There's lots of development going on. It's not a standalone app I can give to a third party and say, "Make the changes."
Michael Ybarra is a contributing writer for SearchCIO-Midmarket.com. To comment on this story, email editor@ciodecisions.com.
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