3 Reasons Businesses Have Video Delivery Problems
Rebecca Rozakis
There are a host of reasons why a business might have video delivery problems. They range from outdated players to poorly formatted videos to physical problems with the network. But as more companies use video for more use cases, it’s increasingly important to have a video delivery strategy. It’s one thing to have the occasional fuzzy video or buffering problem. It’s another to ignore easily-avoided system-wide bottlenecks. What are some of the big structural challenges for video delivery? And how can they be avoided?
When Enterprise Video Delivery Goes Bad
Scenario 1: The Live Webcast
It’s the big company town hall. Everyone gets the invite. 90% of employees join the webcast. At the same time. And instead of the smiling face of the CEO, they see a buffering wheel. (The other 10%? They had mission critical tasks they needed to focus on and planned to watch the VOD.) Only now, the network has slowed to a crawl, and nobody’s getting anything done….
What happened? If you try to pull down hundreds (or thousands) of copies of the same live stream from the cloud, it’s going to kill your network. Webcasting has amazing potential for live communications, but only if everyone can actually watch the video.
The solution: Pull a single copy down from the cloud, and then use an Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) to deliver copies of that to everyone from inside your corporate network.
Scenario 2: The Really in Demand Video-on-Demand
There’s a new compliance video, and everyone is going to have to watch it. The email goes out. In the next ten minutes, half the company clicks the link. Suddenly, even though it’s VOD instead of a live stream, you have the same problem as a big live event. Everyone watching the video has a low-quality experience if they’re able to access it at all. And even the people who aren’t trying to watch that video feel the pain as the network slows to a crawl.
The solution: Pre-positioning is your friend. An eCDN solution allows for content to be downloaded ahead of time, during quiet times. The content is already sitting there, waiting for everyone on the corporate network when they want it.
Scenario 3: The Satellite Office
Not all networks are created equal. Some offices in more remote areas may have lower bandwidth available than others. That doesn’t mean that those employees don’t still need access to the company video resources.
The solution: Here, the ability of eCDN to lower the amount of bandwidth needed for quality video delivery applies to everything, not just the most popular videos. It supports great video, both live and VOD, without requiring additional bandwidth.
Does eCDN Solve All Video Delivery Problems?
No, but it does help eliminate some of the major situations that cause video delivery problems. By distributing video within the corporate network instead of continually pulling down additional new copies, eCDN offers a strategic way to make a big impact on your bandwidth footprint. After all, what’s the point of creating great video content if no one can actually watch it?
