CLOUD COMPUTING

Video Takes a Starring Role in the Cloud

Alison Diana | Date: 08-22-11 | Comments

By moving video to the cloud, all of an organization's employees�even IT�can get the benefit of the technology, without the bandwidth hogging typically associated with video.

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Video Takes a Starring Role in the Cloud
From employee safety and training to corporatewide CEO speeches, from sales presentations to how-to demonstrations, videos are rapidly becoming a fact of corporate life. However, while they may simplify and liven-up corporate communications, videos are not always welcomed by IT professionals due to the technology's typically bandwidth-hungry, network-hogging nature.

"Video content is several orders of magnitude bigger than other content. When IT hears video, they tend to cringe a little bit when they think about their internal network," Ray Hood, CEO of business video platform provider Qumu, said in an interview. "When someone says they'll email a video, that sounds the death knell for the mail system. That's a very big burden."

In addition, video content comes from multiple sources, ranging from the Internet and sites such as YouTube, as well as agency and corporate-created videos. People watch videos from multiple end-points, including traditional Windows desktops, Macs and laptops, as well as a growing number of tablets and smartphones.

"Today's enterprise needs to provide online video where its employees are�at the office, on social networks and on mobile devices," said Melissa Webster, program vice president, Content and Digital Media Technologies, for IDC. "But companies face '7 Evils' when it comes to deploying video�from bandwidth consumption to knowing whether employees are actually watching the videos that are essential to a company running smoothly and effectively. In order to remain competitive, enterprises need solutions that offer flexibility and dependability."

Enter the Cloud

The cloud can keep all members of a corporate constituency satisfied. And, increasingly, that includes video creators, watchers and IT professionals. It should also include the accounting folk, who keep an eye on profitability.

By 2013, organizations are expected to spend $45 billion on cloud-related technologies, hardware and software, compared with $17 billion in 2009, according to IDC. Vendors such as IBM continue to develop technologies that streamline, simplify and speed the implementation, management and deployment of cloud and virtualization solutions, enabling organizations to more easily reap rewards such as increased productivity and lower costs. When it comes to video, simpler adoption of cloud computing could result in an organizational embrace of video�and the benefits it has been shown to have.

Video, for example, is often a much simpler, quicker way to impart directions compared with written instructions. The University of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev created a desktop Webcam-based training program to improve desk-bound workers' ergonomic posture and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD)�or back, neck and shoulder pains and injuries. MSD was responsible for more than one-fourth of all reported workplace injuries and illnesses requiring time away from work in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

All told, MSD cost employers $20 billion and 100 million work days annually, industry experts estimate. Reducing that waste and employee pain would deliver an almost immediate return on investment.

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