Looking back on 2009, the blog entry that generated by far the most fervent feedback was an entry in May called "YouTube is About the Last Thing the Enterprise Wants!"  Interestingly, not only was most of the feedback (pro and con) on point, but in many ways the pro-UGC and anti-UGC camps agreed on most things: 

• Users Generate Content - they do, will, and always have.
• The ability to create content should be distributed and accessible internally and externally.
• There should be a central portal or destination where content is organized.

The genesis of the original post came after chatting with some of our top customers about this subject. They expressed a sincere concern that YTfE would encourage unfiltered and unregulated  user-generated content that would be largely unproductive for, or even detrimental to, the organization (because of the quality, liability and other issues - the "top ten" I referenced in the earlier blog).   

At the same time, all of these organizations, without exception, believe strongly in empowering the experts in their organizations to rapidly and easily capture and share knowledge using video: this is expert-generated content (ECG) and it is created to further a business objective.  And obviously, if you look at our track-record of releasing products that make content creation more accessible throughout organizations, it is evident that we subscribe to this model as well.*     

However, our clients also told us that video EGC was being created from many other sources - such as produced video, archives from conferences and meetings, video conferencing meetings and more - and that they needed a central platform they could use to share, categorize and secure those assets as well as a way for new content to be routed through a review process to ensure corporate branding, quality, compliance, and liability policies were being followed.  These are all requirements that we considered at length when designing our recently released version 3 of the Accordent Media Management System.

Hence, when our clients, like North Shore-LIJ, tell us that they want to empower experts at 15 hospitals around New York City to use a TANDBERG end point in a conference room to demonstrate, for example, proper hand washing techniques, we have the automated, end-to-end workflow that makes it possible.  North Shore- LIJ can build a standardized process into the AMMS to ensure that any EGC video is reviewed, posted and available to relevant employees, and that administrators can track who views the videos and compare those viewing analytics with other mission-critical metrics - such as  reducing patient infection rates.

Our success in delivering end-to-end ecosystems that work for enterprise video communications was recognized in November by the readers of Streaming Media Magazine who voted us the best "Enterprise Video Platform," and by FierceOnlineVideo, which honored us as one of the 15 best "Online Video Companies" for 2009.

We'll continue to adapt our new platform to meet the needs of our clients, including myriad ways to upload the huge array of video content - new and legacy - that comprise their growing content libraries.    

We are firm believers in distributed content creation, empowering experts to produce content that helps support organizational objectives, and we are firm believers in central portals that organize content and make it easy to find.  It that sense, we are as pro-UGC and arguably pro-You Tube.  However, in the enterprise, we believe that the critical distinction between You Tube and enterprise online communications is that the enterprise requires more oversight - and potentially less inclusiveness - than empowering everyone to potentially publish anything for potentially anyone's eyes.

 

*More than six years ago we designed the Accordent Capture Station - which delivers a level of automation and ease-of-use that allows even non-technical users to create rich media presentations. A couple of years ago we rolled out  Accordent Engage - an internal,  service-bureau product that enables these same Fortune 500 clients to empower any expert speaker to stage their own, organization-wide rich media webcast right from the desktop. And our flagship product, Accordent PresenterPRO, has been enabling media professionals to deliver large scale, live webcasts for F500 and other organizations for more than a decade.

 

 

Streaming pundits have long touted the merits of using online video to make a personal, compelling connection with globally dispersed employees.  So once an organization has invested in a visual communications infrastructure, how does the management team take the next step and use those streaming webcasts to make an even more powerful connection?  If you're Merck & Co., Inc., you do it by offering as many as five audio tracks with real-time translation that enable your employees to hear the latest from headquarters in their native tongue.

Merck & Co., Inc. was recently honored by research firm Interactive Media Strategies with an Excellence in Enterprise Video Award for their efforts to push the limits of webcasting with the integration of multiple, live translation language tracks.

With 55,000 employees in 80 countries, and a business that depends on all of them embracing a common, research-driven culture, Merck's management team knew the best way to extend mutli-lingual communications was via their global webcasting infrastructure.  Merck also leverages its visual communications platform to emphasize a unified management team by switching in camera feeds from executives located all over the world so that they come together in the same,  online forum.

Merck does about six webcasts per month using interpreters, as well as more than 650 other live webcasts reaching audiences of as many as 11,000 employees. Merck also reaches much larger employee audiences by making on-demand versions of the webcasts available online via a central media portal.

Since the Merck team has seen how visual communications technology can be used in innovative ways to achieve "borderless" collaboration between its employees and partners, their ultimate goal is to integrate video and webcast services across all desktops, laptops and ultimate into small mobile and handheld devices to enable collaboration from any location, at any time, through any device.

If you're interested in learning more about Merck's streaming implementation, hear what the visual communications team has to say. Watch the IMS video.

Every day, I hear about dozens of "trends" that are driving or imminently will drive the adoption of streaming.  Most of these "trends" make logical sense (e.g. use streaming media as part of your resume), some tangentially incorporate streaming or influence the use of streaming, but few actually drive - in a meaningful and measurable way - the adoption and use of streaming.

At first glance, looking at H1N1 as a possible adoption driver seemed tacky to exploit and otherwise fit the mold of another over-hyped reason to adopt streaming.   Most universities and corporations already had emergency response plans in place (many of which do include streaming) and, at first glance, I saw little reason why H1N1 would require something more or different.  So I reached out to several of the universities that had mentioned H1N1 as a catalyst for looking at streaming.  What I learned was fascinating and, in retrospect, logical.

When you think about it, the education field is in the business of delivering information.  At many levels, but most prominently at the graduate and post-graduate level, they often charge a lot of money for that information. 

For educators, H1N1 potentially presents irreconcilable obligations.  If a break-out occurs, administrators have an obligation to prevent afflicted students from attended class.  Depending on the severity of the individual illness and the outbreak itself, it is possible that students could miss upwards of a month of class-time.  At the same time, educators have an obligation (an often paid for obligation) to educate and to distribute the information that has been paid for. 

 To avoid having to choose between having to fail healthy students (by allowing sick students to attend class) and having to fail sick students by not providing them an education, universities are looking to streaming.  It is not an emergency response plan; it is a business continuity plan.  In the business of delivering information, streaming enables an organization to continue its business despite the possibility of an otherwise devastating H1N1 outbreak.    

 

In the summer of 1999, I was twenty-seven years old and on the cusp of starting my second career, this time as an entrepreneur.   Jereme Pitts and I had already developed a business plan for Accordent, we had mostly convinced Mike Lorenz to join the company as the third founder, and Mike had already spent several months prototyping our original ideas.  We were supremely (read "naively") confident that we had an original idea and that, as conventional wisdom then held, the winner would be the first to market.  It was going to be a race and we all agreed there was no time to dip our toes in the water.

By late September, we were all fully committed to Accordent and on September 29, 1999, the State of California officially acknowledged our existence as a corporation. 

Looking back, that presumed race-to-market proved irrelevant.  As we launched our first webcast presentation product, Accordent PresenterPRO, we were greeted by probably fifty competitors with fifty presentation products that - to me - all seemed pretty good.  Several of these companies were public, many others had raised significant private financing and, as far as I could tell, we all kind of showed up at the same place, at the same time, with what - on its face - looked to be the same product.    

Fortunately for Accordent, our original products were at least slightly distinguished from the competition in that we were focused on power users, a somewhat neglected market given its size compared to the "ubiquity play," easy-to-use products designed for the broader consumer market. 

Fortunately for us, the experts within organizations -  the people charged with producing the large earnings releases and town hall meetings - were the only ones using content creation products, and so we were afforded a unique opportunity to steadily build our relationships, our reputation, our customer list and - as a result of an immense amount of expert feedback - the quality of our products.  

Those early relationships with many of the most visible experts in enterprise streaming were defining for Accordent, and we've remained committed over the years to developing products that met very high standards of reliability and scalability.   We've also remained committed to running Accordent as people, with high levels of accountability and a personal investment in the success of our company, our industry, and our customers.    

Over the last ten years, I've watched Accordent grow like a young child, every day looking and acting a little bit differently, getting bigger, more mature, perhaps more serious and reflective - but always maintaining those same essential qualities that - as is the case with people - make them who they are.

Looking back, I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with some great people - as colleagues, as partners, and as customers - and I look forward to building those relationships and further nurturing Accordent as we embark on our second decade.   

    

 

I don't know how many of you follow Dan Rayburn's "Business of Video Blog" (which is an excellent source for all things in the streaming industry btw), but a recent post really caught my eye as affirming what all of us at Accordent have seen lately: despite the economy (or maybe because of it) enterprise video, among all the markets we serve, is still going strong.

Some time ago, we posted a blog about how the economic downturn had transformed our value proposition -  namely, that organizations can use streaming and webcasting to communicate, inspire, teach and train global audiences incredibly cost effectively - from dull to downright sexy.

Dan makes a similar observation in reference to Ignite's recent profitability. He notes:

 "While many vendors in the market continue to want to be the biggest or show signs of double digit revenue growth each quarter, many vendors like Ignite and others quietly continue to grow their business is a vertical that rarely gets any recognition. Video inside the enterprise is typically not very sexy, much of the content can be quite boring, but it's content that plays an essential role in the way Fortune 500 companies communicate with their employees, partners and customers."

When you consider the amount of hoopla generated by media and entertainment side of the streaming business, it's gratifying to see that when the going gets tough, it's the stodgy old principals of the enterprise  - like the use of technology to do more with less - that get the economy going.

Dan concludes: "Vendors in this space tend to be a lot more quick and nimble, partly because of their size, but also because of their mentality. I think a lot of other vendors targeting the M&E space could learn a lesson or two from some of the enterprise video vendors."

We couldn't agree more...

 

Among all the vertical industries Accordent has served over the last decade, we've seen especially strong adoption of enterprise webcasting in the financial services sector.  In fact, 90% of the world's top 25 largest financial services firms use our solutions - and they do so aggressively.  In fact, almost all of these organizations have graduated from doing the infrequent event - such as a shareholder meeting - and are now driving full-blown online communication initiatives which often entail daily, live, interactive webcasts to thousands of employees around the globe.

So what is it about the needs of this particular industry that has compelled them to make webcasting integral to their operations?  To find out, we reached out to many of these organizations and did a review of how they were using webcasting.  In doing so, we discovered remarkable similarities among them: Each firm used webcasting as a way for executives to make a highly personal and engaging connection to far-flung troops, to reinforce a sense of common culture and purpose, to rapidly disseminate information, and to motivate and retain top talent.

Certainly, some of the unique qualities of this industry also came into play.  All of these firms:

• operate in a rapidly changing landscape
• place a high value on employees
• need real-time communication capabilities
• understand that technology is a competitive advantage
• focused initially on corporate communications, but envisioned a wide array of applications down the road

The more we thought about these attributes, the more we struggled to think of an industry that does not currently operate in a rapidly changing landscape or one that wouldn't benefit by adopting these values.

Which leads us to the final, shared ingredient: at all of these firms, the webcasting initiative was driven by the vision and commitment of senior executives to embrace a new technology.

Which then made us wonder: can you judge the innovation of an entire market segment by their rate of adoption of online visual communications technologies?

Let us know what you think, and what you're seeing in your industry...

 

I cherish the July 4^th holiday.  I love what it represents, that it celebrates some of America's  first and finest moments, and that it reminds us to appreciate the freedoms that we have.  This Independence Day, I am reminded of and have been thinking about many of the things that I often take for granted, including close friends and good health. 

Many of you who have been in the streaming industry know Neal Page.  If you do not know him by name, you know products - such as the Osprey line of capture cards - that Neal created.  As the founder of Osprey, a senior executive at Viewcast, and most recently as founder and CEO of Inlet HD, Neal has had a profound impact on the streaming industry.

In that same time, he has also had a profound impact on Accordent, as one of our original board members, and on me, as a longtime friend and mentor.

For the last nine months or so, Neal has been fighting a rare form of Leukemia.  As anyone who knows Neal would expect, he is fighting valiantly and with his classic sense of humor.   As you would also know, Neal would wring my neck if he knew he was making it into our blog.  

So, I'll quickly transition to the point of this entry.  Among the friends and family rallying behind Neal is his close friend and colleague, John Bishop.  In honor of Neal, and on behalf of the fight against cancer more generally, John will be biking 100 miles in Philadelphia as part of the Livestrong Challenge.  John's  goal is to raise $7,500 in donations for cancer research and prevention prior to the August race.  If you are interested in supporting John, you can make a donation on his personal Livestrong page at: https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=294753&supid=259567932

I must admit I had my reservations about posting this entry, but then I remembered how tight this community has become over the last 10 years or so - and I ultimately decided that this is exactly the type of information that readers of this blog might care about.

Oh yeah, one of the final reasons that I love July 4^th is that it celebrates relaxation and, by extension, time with friends and family.  And so I hope that all of us get a moment to reflect on our independence, reflect on the importance of the people we are getting to spend the holiday with, and, of course, those that we wish we were sharing this weekend with as well.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July.

 

We just got back from Streaming Media East and there's still a lot of hype circulating about "YouTube in the Enterprise."  A couple of years ago, YouTube for the Enterprise (or, YTfE) was an easy way to get everyone on the same page; we even used it for a press tour so journalists could make a quick association for our software which, among other things, provides a searchable online video portal.

But today, YTfE is being used to describe ways to unleash User-Generated Content (largely by vendors that provide this service outside the firewall) and, last time I checked (last Friday) that is about the wildest nightmare of every Fortune 500 webcasting guru  (my fav client response to this article: "a pig in a poke").

Now don't get me wrong: Accordent and our clients have always been about the business of facilitating the use of online video for communications, training and education. We have an entire line of award-winning rich media creation products that we designed in lock step with the world's enterprise webcasting pioneers that we're fortunate enough to count among our clientele.

But, since we've lived and breathed enterprise webcasting for the last decade, we also appreciate the urgency for the enterprise to control content creation and distribution for a wide range of very practical reasons.  The enterprise has to be selectively enthusiastic about empowering employees to create and consume content in order to protect its proprietary information, its network and its brand.

So straight from the mouths of the Fortune 500 webcasting elite, here are...

 The Top Ten Things F500 Webcasters Hate about YouTube for the Enterprise

1. Bandwidth: Unchecked growth and use of video chokes the network
2. Storage: Unchecked growth and use of video devours storage
3. Quality:  CEO webcasts go from TV-quality to looking like hostage videos. Everyone else's desktop creations are much worse.  Or even scary.
4. Branding: C-level, do-it-yourself webcasts where a key executive looks silly or uninformed
5.  Intellectual Property: Naïve tech types unwittingly broadcast proprietary information
6. PR: Rank-and-file suggestions for how the company can correct a stupid strategy or eliminate a bad product
7. Liability:  Someone creates a broadcast that mentions a client, a partner or a project that's under NDA
8.  Governance: Legions of video censors dedicated to tracking down, reviewing and/or quarantining videos that can cause harm to the company
9. Utility:  Instead of information sharing, video becomes a star vehicle for self-promoters. Quality is poor, quantity is overwhelming and the initiative loses credibility in the organization.
10. Control: Any of the above going public and becoming a viral sensation on YouTube

 

So when addressing YTfE, a little common sense needs to be in order. Video as a communications medium is here to stay: all of the Fortune 500 clients we met with, and several of those who were on Mike's enterprise video panel last week, said that they have seen astronomical growth in the use of their services since the economic downturn.  Webcasting saves money, enables lightning-fast knowledge transfer, lets executives stay in close touch with globally dispersed staffs, and much more.

But corporate-wide, video communications initiatives need to be handled like any other enterprise-level program: they should be administered by the pro's (A/V, IT. Corp. Comm's);  there must be controls on content, network resources and viewer access ;  and all of these assets need to be managed, secured, tracked so that only the best, most useful content makes its way to the people who need it the most. In fact, it's the inverse of consumer video sites.       

Is NAB going through a mid-life crisis?  For 17 years I have been an avid NAB-goer.  Over this time I have watched an evolution of sorts, perhaps an extreme makeover.

When I first started attending it was all about the camera and the very latest in video formats.  Each year Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Grass Valley were the hallmarks of the tour.  Occasionally bumping into that "got-to-have gadget" that ultimately rarely proved to be critical.  But it all made the show an exciting experience set against a backdrop of Las Vegas.

This year, however, I woke up and noticed a trend which most likely has been obvious to many and most certainly to NAB Show organizers.  For me, it wasn't about the camera or some new video format.  It was about a new concept, "workflow."  Making a seamless transition from "Content Creation to Management to Delivery" all without going bald (yes I saw the banners too).

The idea of NAB making this transition was evident everywhere.  Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Grass Valley were the typical stops of the tour, but not nearly as interesting as exhibitors new to this production-centric show.  Those "got-to-have gadgets" have matured into real product offerings critical to the content pipeline.

As a Sales Engineer for one of these grown-up-gadgets now critical to Fortune 500 companies and Higher Education, I was able to look fresh from a new set of eyes.  Being both an exhibitor and attendee allowed me to interact with show-goers and get a feel for this "revelation."

No one can argue the fact that the Internet is officially here to stay and with its cost-effective nature, the barrier to entry has dropped to almost nothing.  Content Creators can now reach across the aisle to the audience without a middle-man.  Two of the newest rebirths I saw this year was the Enterprise and Higher Education coming in droves, which appears to have offset the chasm of independent production houses and broadcasters feeling the economic pinch.

Many of these new NAB attendees were searching for holistic systems and have been tasked with creating high-impact content on a modest budget.  Not to mention needing a rich understanding of the viewer and their habits.  Finding this "needle-in-a-hay-stack" will prove to be an opportunity for the NAB organizers and I look forward to seeing them address this in future shows.

So while its always exciting to see the new camera, I believe the real value of NAB today and in the future lies with this new workflow mindset.  And 17 years from now when I write my next blog on NAB, I hope I'll still have a few hairs left (if grey ones) and that no matter what role you play in the content process, that you'll have a place at NAB.

I recently returned from  a business trip to Europe where, among other things, I participated as a speaker at an online education conference in Prague.   The conference, which included attendees from leading universities and government agencies throughout Europe, was in many ways what you might expect:  interesting use cases, technical instruction, and shared anecdotes and experiences, including one presenter from a Ministry in the Czech Republic who conceded that it took three years longer to get permission to run cabling through his protected 450 year old building than it actually took to run the cable. 

But despite the familiarity of the conference format, there was one aspect of the event which struck me, as I sat in a conference hall in the center of Prague, as quite remarkable  - the openness with which the presenting organizations were sharing information, collaborating, and cooperating with other organizations across virtually every imaginable border.   I got to hear a detailed presentation by Dr. Jan Grutorad, whose CESNET organization now links more than 25 universities by a network designed predominantly for sharing research, lecture content, and communicating via video conferencing and streaming.   I also got hear about several multi-national projects, including anti-cancer research projects that are spanning across Europe and rich media management and search products that are comfortably pairing Europe's oldest universities with private technology companies. 

Maybe all of this information sharing isn't all that remarkable, but having been to Eastern Europe many times prior, my sense in the past was that despite an abundant enthusiasm for new ideas and openness, those ideas proved very difficult to act upon.    Now, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, I had the pleasure of hearing how online communications is one of the ways that former Eastern Bloc countries are able to practice and benefit from the openness to which they had been entitled since 1989.