The New Sophisticates: Enterprise Year in Review

The economics of transcoding never translated into the corporate sector historically. But Multicast Media’s 2008 introduction begins to break down those barriers by making transcoding available on a pay-as-you-transcode basis.

Another longtime seller of corporate video solutions, VBrick, has begun experimenting with business alternatives enabled by the growing interest in hosting. In 2008, the Wallingford, Conn.-based company began offering a services-style offering under the name VBoss. With the new product line, VBrick offers corporate users the option of leasing or licensing its video capture appliance on an upfront basis and then provides a range of hosted technology solutions in support of the on-site device.

Corporate users have the option of licensing the entire VBoss service for a single monthly fee. Alternatively, companies willing to pay a deposit in order to deploy the VBrick gear are eligible for an alternative plan that allows them to pay only for the events that they distribute on a webcast basis through the year.

"Even companies that deploy one event per quarter now can afford to leverage the power of high-quality webcasting," says VBrick chief executive officer Vince Graziani.

In October, VBrick raised a new round of $11.9 million in venture capital financing from a group of backers that includes Menlo Ventures. Graziani says the money will be used to support VBrick’s ongoing efforts in the video technology services side along with growing emphasis on systems that help bridge the gap between traditional videoconferencing systems and more flexible online business video solutions.

"What we’ve seen in 2008 is an awakening among large enterprises of the value of linking video conferencing with the employee desktop," Graziani says.

And, indeed, results from the Interactive Media Strategies 2008 Enterprise Web Communications Survey support the notion that companies are growing increasingly interested in integrating traditional videoconferencing systems with online multimedia systems that make it possible for videoconference content to be distributed to employee desktops.

Currently, 14% of overall survey respondents say that they have already deployed capabilities that enable these traditional videoconferencing units to create content that can be distributed to the desktop level of the organization. But interest in more widespread distribution is significant. One-quarter of respondents say they are interested in technologies that extend the reach of videoconferencing content to the desktop. Another 27% of executives at companies deploying videoconferencing report that they are "somewhat interested" in desktop distribution capabilities.

One of the byproducts that result when video content is available from more sources is that corporate users need better tools to manage their burgeoning archives of corporate video content.

A range of leading vendors in the market sector, including enterprise technology vendors such as Accordent Technologies, are focusing increasingly on developing the technologies that make it easier to distribute, manage, and track the rich media content being used within an organization.