October may be a month that companies focused on enterprise webcasting will remember fondly, as some of the industry's top analysts dedicated exclusive coverage areas to the space and/or took pains to define, and clarify, the parameters of the market.

The synergy of these industry authorities over the last few weeks has been exceptional. Consider the following:

• In October, Wainhouse Research launched a new Streaming Products research area, defining the segment as "enterprise streaming solutions, including as least content capture and content/device management capabilities, intended for installation within the enterprise (sometimes called CPE/customer premise installations) and beyond the enterprise firewall." Wainhouse includes a market forecast for enterprise webcasting to reach $1 billion by 2012;

• Dan Rayburn, in his October 28th post for streamingmedia.com (http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/funding_investments/) clarifies that enterprise video is vendors inside the firewall "who are selling hardware, software and services for content capture, encoding, storage etc... as well as solutions for on-demand video," and that those vendors (which include Accordent) "combined are doing around $200 million in revenue this year" - within striking distance of Wainhouse's forecast of $353 million for the same period, which also includes product-related service revenues.

• In his post, Dan even validates our Rodney Dangerfield complex, noting: "With all the talk of video in the broadcast and entertainment verticals, it seems that enterprise based video offerings are rarely written about anymore. I can't remember the last time I read a really in-depth article on video inside the enterprise. This is a shame as there are a lot of major video deployments and continued video adoption taking place within the enterprise market, inside the firewall." Respect indeed!
  

This, combined with reports published last summer by Interactive Media Strategies and Research and Markets, and the numbers for the enterprise webcasting market begin to stack up: the IMS report sized the enterprise webcasting market at $428 million in 2008 and $1 billion by 2011, while Research and Markets anticipates that the segment will reach $300 million this year and $2 billion by 2013.

This recent coverage just goes to show that enterprise webcasting - whether for its cost effectiveness, its capacity to engage video-centric learners or its ability to provide detailed audience tracking, program effectiveness and business intelligence - has become a mainstay on the corporate communications buffet. It's gratifying to see our market grow with the confidence that these same qualities - whether used for knowledge transfer, building esprit de corps, reassuring nervous employees in times of change, or as a practical alternative to putting people on planes for mission-critical product, sales or process training - will continue to resonate as companies look for ways to weather the economic downturn.