Case Study: Dow Finds the Right Streaming Chemistry

Best Practices/Lessons Learned
Although the DiamondTV project is proceeding well to date, the team has learned a few lessons along the way.

IT Involvement
Dow was wise to include representatives from its IT and networking departments in the streaming project from day one. Having these resources involved early had the following benefits:

- Helped streamline the decision-making process throughout the project
- Paved the way for integration with internal systems and services (e.g., LDAP)
- Ensured that the deployment did not infringe upon the production IP network

Capacity Planning
The rollout of DiamondTV has spurred increased interest in content creation and distribution throughout the organization. In hindsight, perhaps this should have been anticipated. For now, however, Dow is dealing with this surge in demand in two ways:

- Limiting content creation to high-quality, polished content on approved topics likely to be of interest to large audiences within the firm
- Expediting plans for expanding the content storage capacity within the system

Gradual Deployment and Migration
To minimize the impact on the user community, Dow is deploying DiamondTV gradually. In addition, instead of implementing a sudden change-over from the existing satellite system, Dow is using a hybrid approach including elements of the satellite system and the new streaming system. By avoiding the temptation to rush the deployment and change-over, Dow has been able to add new functionality to the environment without impacting the level of service.

Future Plans
In addition to the planned deployments and natural expansion of the content library, Dow expects to add new features and functionality to the DiamondTV system. Items currently under consideration include the following:

- Expansion of the content storage capacity within the environment
- Extension of content viewing privileges to external audiences (partners and the public)
- Use of digital signage throughout Dow (powered by Starbak’s Display Engine)

Furthermore, in 2008 Dow expects to upgrade its current Starbak INV system to the new Starbak V3—the third-generation solution from Starbak designed to support greater scalability and improved ease of use.