Streaming Media West '15: Lockheed Martin and On-Prem vs. Cloud
Tim Siglin: Welcome back to Almost Live here at Streaming Media West 2015. I have with me today Eric Hards from Lockheed Martin. Eric, of course, I've had you on panels before. When you were on a panel of mine either last year or the year before, you were going through the process of looking for some new systems to work across your entire organization. I think at that point you had Mediasite in some departments, you had something else in other departments. Where have you gone since then?
Eric Hards: In the panel we had, we had roughly five business areas. Each of those business areas, four of them were using Mediasite and one was using a Qumu product. We've now gone through an RFP process. We've now selected Qumu. That will become our standard across Lockheed Martin.
Tim: One of the things you were talking about I believe in that panel was on-premise versus cloud, and looking at the different models there. What did you end up with on that?
Eric: Yeah, I don't know if you remember it now, but I said if I could go cloud, I would.
Tim: Right, I do remember you said if I had a choice of doing everything all over again.
Eric: Yes, but we don't. Lockheed Martin is very particular about their security for obvious reasons. We brought it all in-house. We are still looking at some possible hybrids that if we need an external only kind of event, we might use the Qumu Cloud for that. Or some other vendor, but we haven't gotten to that point yet. We're just probably looking at rolling out the Qumu product next quarter.
Tim: You were also looking for some way to address a mobile solution as well. Is what you're doing primarily desktop, set-top boxes, mobile or a combination of all of this?
Eric: Yeah, that was a big part of the RFP process was we'd had to absolutely support mobile devices, particularly iOS because we're not an Android house at all or Windows devices. That was a big portion. Qumu has come in and said that, "Yeah, we'll support that for you." We're moving in that direction.
Tim: Good. What are the learnings through the RFP process, not necessarily Qumu's better than Mediasite because I know you all don't do endorsements, but what did you learn as part of the process that would be helpful for our viewers and listeners to understand as you went through the RFP?
Eric: One thing we did that I was very pleased with, actually at the show, I met a gentleman who's a consultant that we brought in to help us through that RFP process, ask the right questions, put together the right scenarios. That was very helpful. The other thing that I wish we had done as a lessons learned was an on-premise test, actually, bringing in the vendor's equipment and software, setting it up and seeing what it was capable of doing.
Tim: Instead of just relying on the paper RFP, actually doing an on-site?
Eric: We actually planned on doing that. As a lot of things, it's a budgetary issue. We worked toward that model, didn't work out well. I think we would've learned more about the products and the services that our vendors offered if we had done that.
Tim: What have you seen at the show this year or what are you here looking for?
Eric: Haven't had a chance to do the floor yet, but one of the things I continually look for is better ways ... I'm more on the production side than I am on the IT side. I'm always looking for better ways to reduce the number of people, to reduce the number of product, to reduce the number of steps I have to go through. I'm always looking on the production side to help me support that.
Tim: We actually had an interesting interview yesterday with a company, I'll tell you about it off camera, but there are some production tools on the show floor I think that you'll find quite interesting, you'll be able to take a look at.
Eric: Good to hear. Great.
Tim: Thank you again for your time.
Eric: Thank you.
Tim: Again, this has been Eric Hards with Lockheed Martin. This is Almost Live at Streaming Media West 2015.