Industry Perspectives: Webcasting - A Fragmented Market
Webcasting has been around for 10 years, and so it is not a novelty technology anymore. It is the fastest-growing IT sector, with real revenues now and a bright future. Still, there is a massive gap between expectations and reality, in part because our industry still can’t seem to get its act together.
Young, Brave, and Webcasting
First there was jerky video streamed very slowly through inadequate networks. The most enthusiastic pioneers saw the technology’s enormous potential, but quality issues kept potential paying customers at bay. Pretty soon, it became obvious that the consumer market was not ready to pay for streamed content, at least not when it performed so poorly. Webcasting gained ground in corporate communications, however, where it performed much better in those bigger pipes and controlled user environments.
It also became obvious that video alone was not enough. Slides and other material needed to be shown, along with all sorts of other interactive features. Back-end content management needs started to rise, as did the need for publishing on portals to provide easier access to presentation materials. Various vendors kicked in and started to develop and offer applications to service these new needs. One-person outfits saw the opportunity for new business, as did more established professional production companies that enhanced their capabilities to deliver streaming.
Big blue-chip tech companies introduced CDN systems to the market to deliver video more effectively, and hardware vendors added more processing power to encode and decode efficiently. The building blocks to deliver end-to-end Webcasting began to take shape.
Webcasting Building Blocks
Traditionally (yes, indeed, we already can say that) there are different vendors for each specific Webcasting component. From consulting to infrastructure to software, everything has its place. Unlike a typical "one desktop, one software" approach, Webcasting involves many different building blocks before it is deliverable. A single vendor usually provides only one block and does it well. When it comes to true turnkey solutions, there are very few vendors. But this is what customers are looking for: they need a solution rather than a handful of building blocks.
Customers do not know nor have time to find out how to make Webcasting work, especially when they are not familiar with the technology. Therefore, many potential Webcasting consumers find it easier to have a teleconference or have an onsite seminar no matter how much more expensive it is.
Mature Technology
The good thing is that the technology for Webcasting already exists and is quite mature. Infrastructure has evolved tremendously during the past few years, and bandwidth is no longer the major issue. Together with CDN systems, pipes are finally capable of delivering the amount and quality of video that is needed, at least in most enterprise environments.
Existing Webcasting software has evolved through many generations, and certain features are already "business as usual." Rivalry between competing video formats has delivered dramatic improvements in both compression and quality. Both MPEG-4 and Windows Media now are being pushed to consumer devices, creating a new growth sector.
We have even reached a point where nothing really new has been released for ages. Every building block is continuously improving, and it looks like all the major barriers have been crossed. It is now time for wide adoption.