Mar. 17--WESTFORD -- Within three years, 90 percent of all traffic on the Internet is going to be in video form, predicts Tom Rosenstein, a marketing vice president for Verivue Inc.

The Westford Corporate Center startup aims to help cable operators and others to store and deliver Internet-driven video quickly and to any end device.

Growth in online video content, as well as on-demand television, is putting a strain on companies like Comcast and Verizon that provide on-demand content, Rosenstein said. Also pressured are Internet companies such as Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies that provide broadcast television shows to PCs, he added.

By using PCs to deliver movies to consumers, these companies end up with rooms full of computers.

"What Akamai does is they just put computers all throughout the world and store video on them and then as video gets more popular they put more computers in those spaces," Rosenstein said. "They are running out of room, they are running out of power."

So about two and a half years ago, a group of investors led by serial area entrepreneurs Jim Dolce and Rubin Gruber founded Verivue. The company is funded with venture capital to develop hardware that replaces computers as delivery systems.

Verivue only emerged from stealth mode this month. The company announced that it raised $40 million in a second round of venture capital from a group that included the venture arm of Comcast; Accel Partners; North Bridge Venture

Partners; Matrix Partners; and Spark Capital Partners, LLC. The company is reported to have previously raised $25 million.

Verivue, which now employs about 85 people, claims to have engineered a media distribution switch about the size of a cooler that can do the work of hundreds of computers for video delivery.

Viewing videos online is improved because the so-called MDX 9000 Series Media Distribution Switch is designed for the job compared to PCs which are not designed to broadcast video, Rosenstein said.

The MDX 9000 will not perform as a word processor or run an Excel spreadsheet; its only capability is video delivery to televisions, PCs and other mobile devices.

"It's the first networking product designed specifically for video delivery storage," Rosenstein said.

Prospective customers include cable operators, telephone companies and other broadband content delivery networks.

The next big idea in video delivery that the MDX can help with will be targeted advertising, Rosenstein said.

Viewers will get advertising aimed at their demographics, based on video selection.

"So you will get a different ad when you watch a video than your neighbor next door and that ad will be targeted toward what they know of your demographics."

Instead of a 30-minute show being filled with eight minutes of advertising, there may be as little as two minutes of ads because companies will only beam their ads to viewers whom they believe will be receptive to them.

Both Dolce and Gruber were huge players in last decade's networking boom. Dolce founded Redstone Communications, which became part of Unisphere Networks Inc. (now Juniper Networks Inc.) in 1999. Gruber co-founded Westford-based Sonus Networks Inc. and, earlier, Davox Corp. (now part of Aspect Communications).

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