Internet Communications

Independent Consultant Chooses WebCaster

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:13:00 +0000

Jan Ozer is a streaming media consultant and frequent contributor to industry magazines and websites on streaming related topics and the author of Video Compression for Flash, Apple Devices and HTML5. This year he reviewed both the MediaPlatform WebCaster platform and the Polycom Accordent Capture Station and Media management System for Streaming Media magazine.

Here is a link to the Accordent review, which appeared in the August, 2011 edition of Streaming media magazine: Accordent Capture Station and Media Management System: Review

Here is a link to the WebCaster review, which appeared in the June, 2011 edition of Streaming media magazine: MediaPlatform WebCaster Review: A Strong Option for Webcasts

We think it is important to note that an independent consultant with recent and intimate knowledge of the two leading webcasting platforms is running his next webcast on the WebCaster platform. You can register to watch his webcast, titled Introduction to Live Event Streaming, which will be broadcast live on Tuesday, October 4, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EST.

Click here to register

Here is Ozer’s description of the event: “This seminar will introduce attendees to live event streaming. It will start by discussing the technologies underlying live event streaming, like codecs and formats, and how most live event platforms can reach both a desktop player (usually Flash) and Apple and Android devices.”

Economic Turmoil Affects Investment in Video

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:17:00 +0000

Interactive Media Strategies released a quite timely study conducted in Q1 2011 that measured corporate executives' financial outlook and how their relative positivity or negativity affected their plans for spending on video. As one might imagine, only 6% of those with a negative outlook projected increased spending on video against 64% projecting less money spent on video.

39% of executives surveyed who were expecting their finances to improve projected increased spend on video, versus 29% who projected a decrease. Unfortunately, the study did not provide the percentage of respondents who were expecting finances to decline versus the percentage of respondents expecting finances to improve.

The above results not all that unexpected, but they lay the foundation for this very interesting data: the study measured different types of executives and how their positions within the company influenced their outlook about whether macro-economic factors would impact spend on video.

46% of those in Accounting and Finance, 43% of those in Training, and 42% of Top Executives responded that macro-economic factors had "No Impact" in their decision to purchase video technology. Overall, 40% of non-IT personnel responded that the economic climate would have no impact.

However, only 29% of IT executives responded that the economy would have no impact.

I attribute this disparity to senior executives and heavy video users (like training executives) being more focused on the ROI and cost reductions that video brings to the enterprise, while IT executives are more focused on the cost of maintaining video delivery infrastructure and the impact on their budgets.

I believe the path to bridging this gap is to leverage the cost savings of the cloud to free up IT resources and still deliver the benefits of video to the business users.

For example, MediaPlatform's PrimeTime application for video asset management leverages public or private clouds to host our application and store all of the video assets. For example: for clients that have Riverbed, we use a cloud instance of the Riverbed Steelhead to reduce bandwidth usage between the cloud and the network by 80%.

As Video Becomes More Ubiquitous, Decisions More De-Centralized

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Interactive Media Strategies released data on July 14 showing that 62% of corporations that purchased video communications technology made the decision at the President/CEO level when there was no prior investment in this kind of technology. That number dropped to 58% when the prior year's spend was as much as $10,000.

The same data shows that when an enterprise already spends $100,000 or more annually on video, the decision-making authority is almost evenly distributed between IT (35%), functional department heads (31%), and the President/CEO level (34%).

I think the clear implication of this data is that when corporations are already committing resources to video communications and the value of video has already been established, and this kind of technology is no longer considered exotic, then decision-making authority becomes more broadly distributed to IT and the business units.

This data is interesting when paired with data released in 2010 that shows 15% of executives surveyed that do not spend money on video and are thus not using video communications believe video communications are "very effective." 58% of executives surveyed that spend $100,000 or more annual on video technology indicated they believe video communications are "very effective."

I am sure this great difference is due to several factors, including: executives who are predisposed to see value in video are those most likely to invest in it, and those that have already made a six figure investment in video will likely not be motivated to feel as if the investment was wasted. Nonetheless, video obviously wears well because executives who are heavily invested in video believe much more in its value than executives who do not employ the technology.

"Silver Tsunami:" Using Video for Knowledge Transfer

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:48:00 +0000

When the Baby Boomers retire they are going to be taking their substantial knowledge with them. The younger generation to whom that knowledge should be transferred likes to consume video. This has some very interesting implications for organizations that want to capture that knowledge, organize it, and make it easy for employees to find it and benefit from it.

Here is a link to a webcast on June 1 where Dan Rasmus, a technology strategist and author of Listening to the Future , will discuss the potential for video to serve as an all important medium for knowledge transfer and organizational learning.

Topics to be Covered:
• Knowledge Acquisition via Video
• Video as a Tool for Knowledge Management
• Use of Video or Operational Efficiency
• Practical Applications of Video for Learning in the Enterprise

Click here to register for the webcast

Interactive Media Strategies believes Microsoft could win big with Skype

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:01:00 +0000

Interactive Media Strategies (IMS) is a market research firm that follows streaming media. They discuss the news of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, and the prospects for Skype to emerge as a viable platform for business video communications.

Their research compares usage levels for a range of social media and communications applications, including Skype, YouTube and Facebook. Here is a link to the video.

They report that personal use of Facebook and YouTube is relatively high but that has not yet translated into comparable levels of corporate use. They believe this raises the question of whether YouTube and Facebook will be able to outgrow their focus on the consumer side of the business to compete in the enterprise market.

Usage levels for Skype are significantly lower overall, but Skype’s penetration in business communications is higher than they see for other communications apps online among young users most likely to experiment with emerging technologies.

IMS puts forth the opinion that if Microsoft could make it easier for technology laggards to embrace Skype - i.e. integrate Skype with the Microsoft Office suite - then Skype could achieve significant enterprise adoption.

Amazon Enables MediaPlatform Migration to the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:58:00 +0000

Here is a link to the case study Amazon prepared about MediaPlatform's use of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Solution (S3).

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/mediaplatform/

MediaPlatform is the only streaming software solution that allows clients to access the obvious benefits of cloud computing while retaining the ability to maintain security, achieve integrations with Active Directory/LDAP, control remote encoders, etc.

Combined with its groundbreaking approaches to multicasting Flash and leveraging the native caching abilities of WAN acceleration devices to stream HTTP, MediaPlatform's cloud offering represents the most innovative approach to enterprise webcasting available on the market today.

Hybrid Flash Multicasting Article in Flex Developers Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:51:00 +0000

An article about Hybrid Flash Multicasting that features MediaPlatform's CTO, Greg Pulier, recently appeared in the Flex Developer's Journal. Click here to link to the article

Here is the opening paragraph:

Hybrid Flash multicasting is the second and decisive wave of innovation that will enable enterprises to stream video without overtaxing their network infrastructures. It eliminates the usual tradeoffs between video consumption and network investment, regardless of increased video traffic in budget-constrained corporate networks. Hybrid Flash multicasting also solves the cost and complexity challenges of IP multicasting. By combining a new form of multicasting, known as application multicasting, which leverages a peer-assisted model of video sharing with an IP multicast network, a video stream can reach virtually everyone on the network using existing bandwidth and infrastructure. Hybrid multicasting finally unlocks the full potential for video within the enterprise by combining IP and application multicasting to deliver streaming media using the most efficient algorithms within a dynamic self-optimizing topology.

WebCaster and Hybrid Flash Multicasting

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 20:17:00 +0000

MediaPlatform WebCaster and Adobe's Flash Media Enterprise Server 4 with Hybrid Flash Multicasting bring a game changing solution to the challenge of delivering video to the enterprise without requiring a seven figure hardware investment for multicasting.

Up to now, solutions for managing streaming video bandwidth issues required networks of expensive hardware, ranging from Enterprise Content Delivery Networks to WAN Acceleration devices. And all of these solutions dictated Windows Media as your video format. Hybrid Flash Multicasting offers a better way; it works seamlessly with traditional IP multicast networks AND it also provides a Peer Assist multicast solution for the parts of your network that are not IP multicast enabled.

Hybrid Flash Multicasting is an outstanding solution because it:

1) allows corporations to continue leveraging the hardware investments they have made and utilize traditional IP Multicasting with Flash instead of Windows Media.

2) allows corporations to reach bandwidth-challenged locations that are not on the multicast WAN or new locations whose networks are not multicast-enabled with a relatively low cost Peer Assist solution (because it does not require new routers and configuration of switches, etc.).

This solution solves the challenge of allowing video to reach 100% of your desktops without requiring a million dollar investment in a new eCDN. And unlike other peering solutions, there is no proprietary agent that has to be propagated to every desktop. All your employees' computers need is the latest Flash player.

Here is how MediaPlatform fits into the equation:

Our WebCaster software is the only streaming video solution that integrates the multicast-enabled Flash player, as well as leveraging Flash's ability to create a cross platform viewing experience, switch between multiple live and pre-recorded video sources, switch bit rates and codecs on the fly, support mobile devices, support H.264 and VP6 to create higher quality video at lower bandwidths, etc. With our software you can take advantage of Flash to upgrade your streaming communications to a more functional format that will work behind the firewall and to the public internet, will work on any browser and operating system, and can deliver content to mobile devices.

Webcasting v. Web Conferencing

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:51:00 +0000

You can see the archive of my discussion with the editors of Simply-communicate about the difference between Web Conferencing and Webcasting by going to their site:

http://www.simply-communicate.com/

They also link to the MediaPlatform White Paper that discusses the same topic.

Simply-Communicate

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:35:00 +0000

Join me tomorrow at 8:00 am EDT / 1:00 pm BST when I discuss the difference between Web Conferencing and Webcasting with the editors of simply-communicate.com.

Click here to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/176834728

The Simply-communicate.com website says:

We are the community for internal communication professionals. We
started publishing in June 2005 and have since gradually grown to 15,000
registered members. Since September 2009 the service is completely free to
use.
We have around 800 articles, toolkits and templates on the site and we
are visited by 16,000 people who downloaded just under half a million articles
last year.

Adobe Releases Flash Player 10.1

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:10:00 +0000

You can download the official release of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 on the Adobe site.

This is the first step in what will be an extremely eventful year for streaming media. Adobe will soon enter the enterprise market in a big way with a version of Flash Media Server that supports both IP and Application Multicasting.

Flash has long dominated the public internet, but its inability to multicast meant corporations had to stick with Windows Media. This new capability will give large enterprises the opportunity to migrate to the Flash format and benefit from its ability to run on any OS and any browser, ease of use, support for higher quality codecs, ability to change bit rates on the fly etc.

MediaPlatform Debuts WebCaster

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:59:00 +0000

MediaPlatform Debuts WebCaster, a Fusion of Performance and UsabilityNew Addition to Webcasting Software Lineup Leverages Cloud Platform for Productivity and Connectivity NEW YORK - STREAMING MEDIA EAST - May 11, 2010 -

MediaPlatform, Inc. (formerly IVT) today unveiled its latest product offering, MediaPlatform WebCaster, cloud-based webcasting software that packs leading edge event management, event customization, and production capabilities into a simple user experience. WebCaster has been built to serve the needs of demanding webcast production professionals as well as non-technical users

"WebCaster is a heavyweight performer with a flyweight price and impact on corporate IT," said Jim McGovern, Chief Executive Officer of MediaPlatform. "Our team has worked hard for over a year to exceed client expectations in virtually every aspect of the webcasting experience."

WebCaster offers a unique mix of best-in-class features, ranging from an intuitive, browser-based user interface and sophisticated reporting to multiple remote presenters and flexible producing teams. WebCaster also offers rich templates with options to customize, total operating system and browser independence, telephony to Flash® Audio input, and iPhone support.
"We went into the development process with a goal of enabling presentations from 'anywhere to anyone,'" said Greg Pulier, Founder and CTO of MediaPlatform, and head of WebCaster's development. "For every feature we considered, our constant question was, 'Will this provide the best possible experience for users at every step of the webcasting process? I am very proud of the work everyone has contributed to this outstanding offering."

With WebCaster, MediaPlatform is further establishing itself as the preferred provider for digital media producers. As the business of producing webcasts for lead generation, training, and conferences continues to expand, MediaPlatform is serving a growing number of top tier digital media production firms. WebCaster is designed to provide producers with a webcasting toolset they can rely upon as they build their production businesses. WebCaster is the newest addition to MediaPlatform's growing portfolio of media production and management offerings.

It complements the company's high-end webcasting product, now known as IVT MediaPlatform, as well as PrimeTime, MediaPlatform's video portal.About MediaPlatform, Inc. MediaPlatform, Inc. (formerly IVT) delivers best-in-class webcasting and media management technology to global enterprises and digital media producers. MediaPlatform's webcasting software enables high-impact presentations for lead generation, corporate communications and training. The company offers organizations the ability to take advantage of scalable cloud-based computing, as well as on-premises deployment, to present and manage rich media. With media management tools built on its platform, the company helps clients derive long term archive value from their investment in media content.

IVT Takes Webcasting Software Platform to the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:02:00 +0000

IVT, Inc. has moved its industry-leading MediaPlatform webcasting software platform to the cloud. With MediaPlatform increasingly being used in large-scale webcasts by media producers, as well as Fortune 500 clients, the company is elevating its delivery capacity through a partnership with a tier-1 cloud infrastructure provider.

“Our mission has always been to deliver the best quality of service and enable our clients to produce webcasts at literally any audience size without concern for infrastructure,” said Jim McGovern, Chief Executive Officer of IVT. “Now that cloud-based platforms are gaining widespread acceptance across the IT world, we can give our clients the benefit of switching capacity on and off when required.”

This is not the first time IVT has been ahead of the technology curve in the webcasting industry. The company pioneered the concept of offering webcasting software on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis with MediaPlatform. With MediaPlatform in the cloud, IVT enables its clients to benefit from what is rapidly emerging as the new paradigm for corporate computing.

In the cloud, MediaPlatform’s web services architecture can more readily serve diverse client needs by integrating with a range of enterprise systems, both cloud-based and on-premises.
The cloud, an approach to computing that places servers and infrastructure in remote, abstracted datacenters, is ideal for webcasting, which is known for unpredictable spikes in system load. By working with a tier-1 cloud infrastructure provider, IVT gains virtually unlimited capacity and world-class security, reliability, redundancy, failover, and load management.

IVT will continue to support the numerous on-premises installations of its software, including major deployments at global enterprises. IVT prides itself on offering its clients the choice between hosted and on-premises options.

IVT Raises $5.5 Million for Webcasting Software

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:34:00 +0000

As the article appeared in TechCrunch...

IVT, a company that produces enterprise-friendly webcasting software, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from Syncom Venture Partners with Barshop Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Tudor Ventures participating in the investment round. IVT raised $3 million in Series A funding in 2006.
IVT’s SaaS offering not only helps power webcasts, but also converts multimedia files, such as slideshows, into viewable videos for the web. IVT also offers a YouTube-like hosting and social media site for companies to disseminate videos and webcasts. And the startup has a number of prominent companies that use its webcasting software including Oracle, Dow Chemical, IBM and NEC.

Enterprise Communications - Meet IVT

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:44:00 +0000

Here is a link to a recent post by Roger Courville on his "The Virtual Presenter" blog. It reads

A VFAQ (VERY frequently asked question) I get is “what’s the difference between web conferencing, webinars, and webcasts?”
The short answer, these days, is “not very much and a whole bunch.”
Seriously, the lines have blurred from the days that “webcasting” was akin to broadcasting (using streaming media) with virtually no interactivity, whereas web conferencing was (and remains) live, totally realtime (you don’t want any delay when you’re talking on a phone conference, right? In many use cases, you don’t on the web either).
Webinar is simply a portmanteau of web seminar – arguably a use case rather than a technology. That is brief, but it’s as deep as I’m going as I introduce IVT and their enterprise video communications.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mitch, Hugh, Jim, and Ryan, all at the same time. In addition to the knowledge and passion and history (Hugh’s a fellow ex-Microsoftie with some common connections), what I’m most enthused by is their clarity of mission.
Hello software
First, IVT’s a software company. You can host the software, but for reasons I’ll not get into, you want to take advantage of the fact that they host the software for you. What’s interesting here isn’t a “right or wrong,” it’s a commitment to a business model. Many (if not most) companies who have solutions for webcasting also provide professional production/event management services. IVT is committed to their robust partner community who deliver value-added services atop the IVT platform. Again, this isn’t a right or wrong, but you have to appreciate focus.
Hello production tools
It’s hard to tell you how important the backend of a product is. It’s what economists call an “experience good” …you have to have been there to get it and appreciate it. As it just so happens I spent many years running organizations in the production business, let me say the two words that will bring any accountants to their needs and get the producers all excited: labor and labor. Labor is expensive. Technology, especially over time, often gets less expensive. If you’ve ever produced an event, let alone a bunch of them, you know that the project management time can create a big sucking sound in your budget. This is where producers get excited… not only will they find the flexibility on the back end of IVT’s platform a joy when meeting numerous and disparate client/stakeholder needs, but it’ll save them time.
Hello customization
Okay, so many different solutions offer degrees of customization, but far fewer have down-to-the-pixel capabilities. When clients demand that, you’ve got to deliver. Further, there’s customization of user experiences, such as different tools you might make available to a presenter versus what the marketing department sees when they need to pull down a report. And then there are web services for the data integration geeks (I say that with love, mind you).
Hello remote presenters – but wait, there’s more
A point of differentiation here is multiple presenters, each with different camera types. One can have a webcam in Sydney, one can be standing in front of a hi-def broadcast camera at a conference in a New York hotel…you get the idea. Need to switch back and forth like a television newscast? Can do.

As is my style, my goal isn’t a vendor-by-vendor shootout, to talk about price, or make a recommendation. I’m excited and privileged to be independent, talk to great people with their own angle on the market, and share with you my own spin on it. It sounds like IVT has a solution if you need to reasonably reach 100 people and the horsepower to reach 20K if you need. If you need flexibility and reach and a commitment to knowing their core biz, IVT (or one of their partners) might be someone to add to your must-investigate list.

IT Departments Utilizing Virtualization

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:47:00 +0000

IDC released its Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker on September 2, 2009, which reports that "factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 30.1% year over year to $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09)."

According to IDC, this is the lowest quarterly server revenue since they began tracking this market in 1996.

The obvious implication is that the economy has been awful and companies have been avoiding / deferring IT spend. But beyond that it seems that virtualization has both benefited from and contributed to this decline.

With a single server now able to run multiple workloads, it seems inevitable that the server footprint is destined to continue getting smaller within the corporate data center. But the benefits of virtualization do not stop with simply running more apps on one machine; the whole datacenter becomes more agile, more flexible to deal with unexpected changes in workload.

The ability to get more from fewer boxes is certainly a contributing factor to less boxes being bought. And tight budgets in the 2009 economy have certainly contributed to IT managers seeking out less costly options.

It will be interesting to see how the server market rebounds.

Andy Patrizio in his InternetNews.com blog quotes Rahul Agarwal, co-founder of Infiniti Research. Within the dismal sales figures, Agarwal notes that both Gartner and IDC report that unit costs are going up for server sales. Agarwal believes that this is due to sellers trying to widen margins by selling more feature-rich machines:

Our view is that to offset this volume pressure, hardware vendors will be
forced to improve unit margins by building in virtualization capability, memory
and I/O interfaces in the hardware.

So the strategy to improve revenues will enable IT departments to further utilize virtualization, continuing the trend toward fewer individual servers.

Agarwal noted that many servers out there are quite inefficient, particular amongst small-to-medium sized businesses, so the more successful players will focus on consolidation to increase efficiency and reduce the footprint. He says:

The server market of tomorrow will be a value game and not a volume game.

Enterprise Video Fulfilling Its Promise

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Video is beginning to fulfill its promise as a transformational technology. Beyond merely cutting communications costs, video is starting to change the way companies do business, and is rapidly being accepted as a "need to have" rather than a "nice to have."

Cisco CEO John Chambers predicts video traffic on the internet will increase six fold by 2012. Here is a link to Cisco's August 5 earnings call where he makes that prediction.

A classic example of the power of video is that of electronics manufacturer NEC. They have a network of nearly 500 dealers across the United States that sell their products. They saved more than $250,000 annually in training costs by delivering product training with video webcasting rather than sending trainers to the dealers or bringing the dealers to the trainers.

They also dramatically reduced the time it takes to train the entire network on new products. Click here to watch a video case study.

A newer example shows how video can literally transform the way a company does business. A major sneaker company manufacturers its products in China. Each time they re-tooled to manufacture a new sneaker, executives would have to fly to China to ensure the tooling was correct and the sneakers were meeting specifications before they began mass production.

They began to use high definition cameras at the plant in China to webcast video of the sneakers to allow executives to make their inspection virtually. Sure, they save money on travel to China. But more importantly, there was a practical limit to the amount of people who could go to China to see the actual design come off the assembly line. The video process allows them to solicit input from a much broader segment of the company, and even get input from retailers while there is still time to respond to suggestions.

The end result is that they can bring their products to market faster than their competition, which creates a significant competitive advantage. Click here to see the video discussion.

I am particularly pleased to see clear evidence of unmistakable, game-changing ROI.

Health Chief Sebelius Webcasting Today at 1:00 pm EDT

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hosting a webcast at 1 pm EDT today, Friday August 7.

Use the hashtag #HCRQ to ask a question via Twitter or email hhsstudio@hhs.gov.

Online Event Services Industry Continues Evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Steve Vonder Haar recently released an outstanding research report about the online webcasting event services business.

He states that consumers of webcasting services have been motivated by two priorities: 1) the desire to keep costs low; and 2) the desire to keep involvement of their own IT departments to a minimum. For this reason, major webcasting event service providers, like ON24, have enjoyed their greatest success at the ends of the market spectrum: low cost self-provisioning services and high touch premium webcasting services.

The premium end of the market has been bolstered by the complexity of the client's needs, which has kept fees high and competition at bay. The low end of the market had become increasingly commoditized.

He concludes that service providers are going to have to push more to the middle of that spectrum and identify more companies that require well-produced webcasts for the market to continue growing.

He also mentions that the complexity of webcast events that has traditionally protected the major service providers is no longer a significant barrier to entry. Sophisticated webcasting software offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis allows any number of production companies, agencies, and event companies to compete on an equal footing with the ON24s and the OnStreams.

According to Hoovers, the US marketing and services industry includes about 35,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $80 billion. The industry is fragmented because the top 50 companies generate less than 40 percent of that revenue. In other words, there are a large number of potential buyers of enterprise webcasting software that want to compete for online event services business at a time when traditional advertising revenues are falling and internet advertising revenues are growing. Internet communications are definitely going to become a greater point of emphasis for these companies.

I am unable to attached the report, but you can request a copy at the Interactive Media Strategies website.

Enterprise Software: Saas vs. the Big Three

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Forbes.com published an article by Dan Woods where he describes a battle between the traditional enterprise software providers (Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle) and Saas providers like Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

According to Woods, SaaS applications are easier to use because they offer streamlined interfaces that are modeled after successful web consumer sites like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, etc. These SaaS interfaces were designed to be easily configurable.

Traditional enterprise software is not as easy to use because user interfaces are often created before it is known exactly how the software would be used. Customization to the user interface is often done at installation by systems integrators who do not have any actual user behavior on which to base their customizations.

The Big Three are well aware of the usability gap between their products and SaaS software, but it is unclear how to solve the problem. Oracle emphasizes Fusion as an integration platform. SAP recently announced an experiment called Blue Ruby that is attempting to adapt Ruby on Rails as a user interface and programming technology for its applications. But is it possible to affordably automate a business starting with a configurable application platform that must be adapted to the specific user interfaces and business processes in a company? The SaaS model starts with a usable interface and a working automation of common processes, and then has the configuration proceed from there. The hosted nature of SaaS removes the deployment barriers.

IVT software is the only webcasting and digital asset management applications available both as a SaaS and as a behind-the-firewall installation. With webcasting software, the divide has included the question: should there be proprietary hardware or should the solution be software-only.

IVT falls on the software-only side, believing that "black box" proprietary hardware is not scalable and is prone to obsolescence.

IVT software on a SaaS basis works with the network infrastructure that already exists, which is one of the competitive advantages we take to the enterprise video battle.

IVT MediaPlatform 4.1 Sets New Standard for Enterprise Video Communications

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:22:00 +0000

IVT released its latest upgrades to its MediaPlatform software.

Click to view the announcement.

Obama Saves on Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:28:00 +0000

On March 26, President Obama took questions in East Room of the White House, but there was a twist. The East Room is usually the scene of press conferences where the President submits to questioning from the White House press corps. But in this case, President Obama took questions directly from an internet audience as 67,000 viewers watched a live stream of the event.

There are many interesting implications: the bypass of the media filter; the virtual town halll; the modern fireside chat; the 21st century version of participatory democracy.

But on a very basic level the event contains a significant lesson for corporate America.

An Associated Press article cited in the dailycamera blog quotes presidential spokesperson Robert Gibbs:

"It's not a whole lot different than were we in California doing the meeting," Gibbs said. "It's just we'll have people hooked up from a lot of different places all over the country, but he'll be able to do all that from the East Room."
"It's a way for the president to do what he enjoys doing out on the road, but saves on gas,"

IVT's client NEC, a leading provider of IT network integrated solutions, documented annual savings of $250,000 replacing road shows with webcasts.

How much can the White House save by using webcasting to bring the American people to the East Room of the White House rather than traveling around the country to take questions in local town halls?

Has any politcal town hall been held in a venue that could hold 67,000 people?

Webcasting versus Internet TV

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:32:00 +0000

President Obama's recent press conference on March 26 was available for online viewing.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. Of course, millions if not tens of millions watched the press conference live on broadcast television so what is the big deal about another 60,000 or so watching on the web?

I wrote about the democratizing effect of using the internet to bypass the Washington press corps and taking questions from the people in my last post.

But there is at least one more point of interest. The Obama press conference exemplifies how video can be used to great effect in the enterprise.

The internet will never supplant television's ability to broadcast to tens of millions of people. Why pay for the bandwidth to replicate the scale and quality of a broadcast platform that already works very well?

But the internet does scale rather well to the needs of the enterprise: an audience of tens of thousands. And there are several "internet television" services that are emerging to deliver video across the corporate network to the employees.

But this begs the question: why should a corporation or organization invest in a network able to deliver video across its enterprise and then settle for pre-recorded video with no interactivity?

It was not the video feed that made the Obama press conference so noteworthy. It was the 104,129 questions that were submitted by the American people. Enterprise video is much more effective when it is combined with interactive rich media features like live questions and answers, live polling, surveys, testing and certification, synchronized PowerPoint, whiteboarding, registration and reporting, etc. Choosing to merely deliver the video - live or on-demand - is choosing to ignore the strengths of webcasting and get the least bang for your buck.

Why invest in servers and hubs and routers and content engines and then settle for a video platform that does not enable interactivity?

According to research done by Steve Vander Haar that he shared in a recent webcast, 68% of executives polled believe streaming video has measurable value only when it is combined with a registration system that enables reporting about who watched.

Registration and reporting adds accountability to internal communications and adds measurable results and lead generation to external communications. Internet television gives that capability away when it simply loops pre-recorded video in a window on one's website.

President Obama's press conference is a template for the effective use of internet video in the enterprise. Just as the televised Nixon vs. Kennedy debate serves as the defining example for understanding the difference between television and radio in politics, I believe this press conference will be regarded similarly for its effect on politics and on business communications.

There are plenty of corporations out there who are already doing a great job with rich media. Some of them are my clients. But the nature of corporate communications is that much of the content is for an internal audience, so there is not an obvious opportunity for organizations to learn from the successes of others. But the Obama press conference lays the formula bare for all to see.

President Obama Webcasts Press Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:39:00 +0000

Last week President Obama held a press conference and took questions from a virtual audience in a video webcast.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. The White House website was open for questions for 36 hours before the press conference. 3,607,837 votes were cast for 104,129 submitted questions.

The President answered seven of those questions. One of them was about the legalization of marijuana. Some groups banded together and used the opportunity of this process to submit a high number of questions about that topic, and the despite the fact that vetters tried to avoid that issue, President Obama weighed in with a firm no.

My point has nothing to do with the politics of marijuana.

If I can be so bold as to be self-referential, my first post on this blog was to equate the power of webcasting technology to that of the printing press. The printing press broke the monopoly of a relative few (for example, monks) who had the ability to publish the written word and decide which books were worthy of reproduction and distribution (most often, the bible). The printing press made publishing accessible to the masses.

Regardless of one's politics regarding the issue, I think everyone would agree that those who favor legalizing marijuana are not in the "main stream" or among the more influential interest groups in this country. Yet the President of the United States specifically addressed their question.

The Washington DC press corps is not going to ask that question - rightly or wrongly. But the webcast by-passed the traditional media filter and brought the concerns of this group of people to the attention of our country's chief executive.

How does that translate to the corporate world? Well, what is the value of getting real feedback from the rank and file? What corporation would not benefit from taking their executives out of the bubble on the 40th floor and exposing them to the concerns of the people at the sharp end of the spear?

What is the value of a corporate culture? Most companies do a poor job of communicating and maintaining a corporate culture from the top down. But the best companies leverage webcasting to enable communications from the bottom up and include that feedback in the corporate culture.

There are perhaps a few hundred journalists with access to the President. These journalists are the only way 300,000,000 Americans can hold their leadership accountable between elections. That is, until last Thursday when webcasting allowed the people to submit questions to their President and their President decided to answer them.

March Madness in High Def

noreply@blogger.com (Michael_Grant) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:39:00 +0000

Ryan Lawler notes in his Contentinople blog that CBS's high definition stream of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has been a great success.

CBS Sports reported that traffic to its NCAA March Madness on Demand site on the first day of the tourney increased 56 percent year-over-year, to 2.7 million unique users yesterday from 1.75 million uniques a year ago.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn, I do not think it is that internet video can or should compete with television. In this case, I believe the draw is a combination of the fact that watching television on Thursday afternoon is not an option for people with a day job, and that there are many games going on simultaneously and CBS television does not always cut to the game that the individual user wants to see.

I think the focus should be on the success of delivering a high quality video experience to a large audience, many of whom were at work. This is just another step in the direction of enterprise video becoming an essential element of the workplace experience.