Company Profile: FocusVision Empowers Market Research with Streaming Media

Videos sent through FocusVision’s system are archived for on-demand playback for 30 days, although longer storage can be arranged if needed. Customers are also provided with a copy of the video on CD, and they’re easily able to snip out video clips that can be inserted into presentations.

A Lot of Streaming
Somewhat unique to FocusVision’s implementation of streaming media is the length of each viewing session, even compared to other corporate communications webcasts of things like earnings reports and so forth. "We do about 70 transmissions a day that are on average eight to twelve hours long, and that’s seven days a week," says Houlahan.

Combining the length of these webcasts with the hundreds of facilities in the U.S. and in 29 other countries, it comes as no surprise that FocusVision handles a sizable amount of streaming traffic. "In 2005 alone we did about 75,000 hours of live streaming, and we’re not counting the number of archived hours that we serve up in that number," says Houlahan. "In other words, we do a lot of streaming."

Yet, despite the sheer number of hours spent streaming, there are some limitations on the scale of the traffic that they push through their streaming infrastructure. "On average, we’re transmitting to maybe four or five viewers per stream. Obviously, we’re not broadcasting to millions of viewers around the world with each event," says Kunar.

The streams that are served also aren’t exactly pushing the envelope when it comes to the bitrate of the video. "We stream at 110Kbps, and that’s mainly because when we started off in 2000 a lot of these corporate networks were shut down for streaming traffic," says Kunar. "Since we knew there’d be four or five clients at the same location wanting to watch the same stream, we figured a 250Kbps stream with four or five people watching it would almost always be blocked at the corporate level. Trying to get the corporate IT guys to realize the value of streaming and segregate more bandwidth for it has been a challenge."

In the meantime, FocusVision has concentrated its efforts on better codecs, cameras, and microphones in order to deliver a higher quality experience to their clients. And as more bandwidth is set aside for streaming media in corporate IT infrastructures, they will up their bit rates as needed.

Streaming vs. Videoconferencing
After the introduction of a streaming alternative to its video conferencing solution, FocusVision quickly saw that side of their business take over as the preferred choice by the majority of their clients. "There’s a couple of core clients that prefer videoconferencing, and they are pretty much carrying that ten percent of our business. The growth of streaming versus videoconferencing had kind of slowed recently, but that’s because there’s not much business left for it to take," says Houlahan.