Buyer's Guide to Enterprise YouTube Platforms 2016

Enterprise YouTube platforms enable businesses to share videos with employees, partners, and other viewers; interested parties can then preserve and share the valuable institutional knowledge accumulated in these videos. Most systems function the way you’d expect: You upload videos into the system, which provides content management capabilities, mobile and desktop players, and basic analytics. Enterprise YouTube systems typically provide a channel-based structure for segmenting content for different departments or divisions, with a single sign-on security system that can leverage an existing enterprise security system.

At first glance, most enterprise YouTube systems look similar, but as you scratch the surface you’ll see dramatic differences that impact both functionality and usability. In this article, I’ll identify some questions to ask while evaluating enterprise YouTube systems to help avoid these potholes.

Where Will You Deploy the System?

Most systems are available as SaaS cloud solutions, but a very few can be licensed for installation behind the firewall. If you’re looking for a system to install in your own cloud, ask about this early. If you’ll be equally targeting internal and external viewers, ask about deploying a hybrid model that delivers internally via your internal pipes, and externally via the SaaS model.

Irrespective of where the system is deployed, if you expect significant distribution within the enterprise, ask if the system can use existing third-party WAN acceleration technologies such as Riverbed, Bluecoat, and CISCO ACNS, to deliver the content efficiently within the enterprise. Also check if the vendor offers features or separate products for streamlining delivery within the firewall. Techniques such as P2P, caching, or pre-positioning content on servers throughout the enterprise can really simplify the delivery of high-quality video within a wide area network.

Managing the Flash-to-HTML5 Migration

Flash playback became the “ring around the collar” (#showingmyage) for most enterprise systems in 2015, and many vendors aggressively moved to reduce or eliminate their Flash dependencies. However, many corporate YouTube systems enable a level of interactivity that makes implementing the equivalent feature set in HTML5 a complicated undertaking.

Nonetheless, in 2016 or 2017, many organizations will have to deliver video both to newer computers without Flash, as well as legacy models that don’t support HTML5. You should understand how any vendor on your shortlist plans to manage this migration and legacy support.

How Will You Use the System?

Some systems are designed for top-down video distribution with very rigid structures for those who can upload videos. Other systems make it simple for all employees to share videos, with moderation functions available to catch problem videos before they go live, or a flagging system to catch them before they do too much damage. Obviously, the system you buy should support your intended usage.

So during the buying process, understand what rights are necessary to upload videos into the system, and how those rights are granted. This sounds simple, but it can often be agonizingly complex, as permissions apply to a variety of hierarchical content and design-related functions and rights across multiple channels. If very few users contribute videos, it’s acceptable to assign these rights within the enterprise YouTube system itself. If thousands contribute, these rights should come from your corporate security system, which would take days of system configuration. Surprisingly, very few systems have a structured moderation workflow, so if this is essential, ask about it early.

You should also have a vision for where you want videos in the system to be viewable. Some systems are largely internally focused, and seem like they require a court order for public viewing of a video. Others enable public viewing via a simple checkbox that can be assigned by video or channel, and some take this a step further and can syndicate your videos to YouTube or other sites. Choose a system that suits your intended distribution, and if external viewing is a major component, make sure the system enables comments, social media links, ratings, and other interactivity that can attract more eyeballs.

You should also understand where you expect your employees to watch the videos from the system. If you have an existing portal, make sure the enterprise YouTube system integrates with that portal. All enterprise systems enable their own portals, but they vary significantly in terms of appearance and customizability. If you intend to use the portal, it becomes your corporate face, and it should share your branding and organizational look and feel. So you should ask about portal and player customizability, both overall and by channel, since sales might want a totally different look and feel than human resources or technical support.

What Types of Content?

All systems support uploaded VOD files, but others enable many additional forms of content. For example, several enterprise YouTube vendors offer webcast products that integrate well with their YouTube systems, with webcasts automatically converting to VOD playback once complete. You can also invite viewers via the enterprise YouTube portal, providing a single face to multiple content types.

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