Choosing an Enterprise Webcasting Solution

"Intangibles are important, but you have to know the right time to introduce them," Berlin says. "Once the business case has been made, the intangibles are your closers in convincing others of the value of the technology."

Picking the Right Technology for the Job
After navigating through the hurdles of corporate politics just to win approval for the webcast implementation, selecting a technology solution that enables online video in the enterprise would seemingly be a straightforward process—a simple matter of comparing and contrasting the features and attributes of a range of vendors in a technology matrix.

Dozens of options are available to companies considering the deployment of webcasting capabilities. And no single solution is a perfect fit for all business users. An offering that is ideal for a Fortune 500 organization, for instance, may be ill-suited for the needs of a mid-sized manufacturing firm.

Prospective business webcasters need to ask themselves some fundamental questions about their basic preferences for technology deployment. In the process, they will identify key prerequisites that will help them narrow down the field of viable online video solutions. Important issues that help set the stage for further technology evaluation include the following:

—Preference for On-Site or Software-as-a-Service Solutions: Organizations must determine their appetite for how webcasting solutions are bundled and sold to them. Some manufacturers will create software and devices that companies can deploy behind their own firewalls, allowing them to manage the technology on an on-premise basis. Others offer solutions on a hosted basis, allowing users to access relevant applications from a data center managed by outside organizations. Companies with a more proactive IT organization will likely want to maintain the control and added security afforded by on-premise solutions. Those seeking access to solutions that can be updated regularly without significant IT intervention may opt for hosted alternatives. Naturally, other alternatives exist along this technology spectrum. In some cases, an organization may hire a vendor to produce and distribute a webcast event on its behalf on a turnkey basis. Others may prefer managed services in which on-premise equipment is maintained by an outside technology provider.

—Determine Distribution Method: A major concern for many organizations considering the deployment of webcasting is the impact online video traffic will have on their corporate computing network. In the implementation phase, organizations must determine whether added multimedia traffic will be handled on their existing corporate computing network or whether they will invest in additional network capacity in the form of an add-on peer-to-peer (P2P) network or distribution capabilities supplied by a content distribution network. The choices made in the network distribution model can have significant impact on the upfront and ongoing costs associated with webcast adoption.

—Gauging Scalability: Companies must determine what premium they are willing to pay for a system that can grow with expanded internal demand for online video. Some initial implementations can be highly affordable but offer only a dead end in terms of long-term deployment viability. As companies expand their use of online multimedia, demand for add-on capabilities, such as content management systems, will grow in step with their burgeoning use of online video communications.

Be aware that the level of experience that a company (and the purchase decision executive) has with online multimedia will shape the perception of key priorities in the purchase-decision process. Among companies that are new to the world of online video, the price of a technical solution is the paramount consideration used in justifying the purchase of a specific technology solution.

Companies and executives that use the technology on a frequent basis tend to move beyond the parameters of price in their evaluation process. Rather than focusing on costs, these groups emphasize implementations that help online video to work more effectively for their organization. Because the following issues tend to increase in importance among those with significant exposure to online multimedia, companies new to the technology may want to address these issues in their initial implementations of webcasting capabilities as a way to futureproof their investment in the technology. Among experienced users, key technical issues that merit consideration include the following:

—Integration With Corporate Infrastructure: Webcasting solutions architected to tap into existing corporate technology platforms help to better weave online video into a company’s ongoing business activities. Integration with LDAP directories, for instance, helps webcasting solutions leverage existing user IDs and corporate groupings to make the appropriate content available to the executives authorized to view it.