Enterprise Case Study: HP’s Streaming Group Grows Up

For a corporate production studio, the Media Solutions Group at the Hewlett-Packard Company sure has been busy. Over the past year and a half, Media Solutions has produced over 2,000 separate projects - from satellite broadcasts to live and on-demand streaming. Until now, Media Solutions has been a strictly in-house operation, delivering media services to HP's various business units on a cost-recovery basis. But soon, Media Solutions will be taking its act on the road.

Because the internal demand for Media Solutions' services has been so high, beginning in the second quarter of this year, the Media Solutions Group will be folded into the HP Consulting Group, and will offer streaming and other media services to external companies. "Our value has always been that we save money for HP," says Michael Lachtanski, department manager for HP Media Solutions. "We're now going to offer this outside and focus on making real dollars."

The picture wasn't always so rosy. When HP initiated a company-wide, cost-cutting policy three years ago, satellite broadcasts dropped from 12 per month to three or four per month. As a result, HP's Video and Broadcast Services Group (the precursor to the Media Solutions Group) lost more than $1 million that year. Lachtanski attributes much of Media Solutions' turnaround to its re-invention as a Web-centric operation. "We saw broadcast teams at Tandem and Apple going away and losing their jobs," he notes. "It looked like HP was going to follow the same route. Then we jumped on the streaming bandwagon, and now we're in our heyday." Today, Media Solutions delivers 10 to 15 live webcasts and up to 100 on-demand presentations monthly. The few productions that are still broadcast via satellite - such as major addresses by HP chief executive officer Carly Fiorina — are also webcast. In addition, all live webcasts are made available for subsequent on-demand streaming.

Not all of the Video and Broadcast Services Group project managers survived the shift to a web-based paradigm. "We went from having somebody that does satellite broadcasting only, videotape production only, or Web site design only, to people who could manage projects in all these spaces," says Lachtanski. "A number of people said, ‘I don't do that other stuff.' They decided to leave." The Media Solutions Group currently maintains a permanent staff of 22, including 15 project managers. To minimize overhead costs, Media Solutions draws production personnel (camera operators, non-linear video editors, and so on) from a deep pool of freelancers. "Carly Fiorina could call us right now and say, ‘I want a broadcast at 4 o'clock,'" notes Lachtanski. "And I'd have to have a crew here."

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