Regulation Compliance, Expedited

For large, publicly traded companies, maintaining operations within the law can be as crucial as managing costs. The immediacy and simplified distribution enabled by streaming technology can be a boon for these companies, in a variety of ways.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's recent adoption of Regulation FD - establishing full-disclosure guidelines for corporate financial reporting - has sparked a dramatic increase in the use of streaming audio and video in corporate investor relations. The SEC's definition of "Public Disclosure," which is required by Regulation FD, was specifically "…designed to permit issuers to make use of current technologies, such as webcasting of conference calls, that provide broad public access to issuer disclosure events." Akamai's Kirkish notes, "The number of companies from all sectors giving their quarterly reports via either streaming audio or streaming video is very substantial."

Many financial analysts and fund managers also stream their reports. The vast majority of investor relations' streams are audio-only - mostly because it is much less expensive than video, or perhaps because winks aren't visible in audio.

Brick-and-Mortar Streams Structural Group, which upgrades and retrofits bridges, seems an unlikely early adopter of streaming, but the company has built an impressive streaming training program. ... read more

Some corporate HR departments are beginning to stream regulatory compliance and other videos on subjects ranging from sexual harassment in the workplace and conflict management to the corporate 401(k) plan. Streaming server logs can be tracked to discover which employees watched which videos and for how long.

In a related use, streaming video helped Cisco to earn its ISO certification. "We made video presentations with the directors of each of the key areas, like manufacturing and quality," said Mitchell. "We let [users] know what the procedures were and made sure everybody watched it. We took registration and tracked it so we could show the ISO people, ‘These people watched it for this long. This percentage of our audience is verified as having gotten this information.'"

Migrating Content: When, Where, and How

While some streaming content is directed to niche audiences both inside and outside the corporate firewall, enterprises primarily direct content to three distinct audiences that are defined by their level of access to the streams - the corporate intranet, the extranet (available by password to clients or vendors), and the public Internet. As in entertainment, the target audience for enterprise streaming content often dictates when, and how, that content is delivered.

Different types of streaming content are usually intended for different audiences, and many companies have streaming servers on both sides of the firewall. Intranets stream at higher bit rates than the Internet; extranets sometimes deliver even higher-quality streams to potential customers. Sometimes, the same content will make its way from the intranet to the extranet, and to the public Internet over time. Cisco's Mitchell explains, "Information tends to have a life cycle. If something is brand new, a new product introduction, it's still confidential. But at some point it's solidified and we want to make it available to train our partners the same way we train our internal people. Then, in some instances, that same information can get moved [onto the public Internet] as well."

Enterprises must also decide when to offer the "what you want, when you want it" convenience of on-demand, and when to deliver the interactivity and stickiness of a live webcast. Peter Yorke, regional director of streaming media for Exodus Communications, observes, "About 90 percent of it is on-demand, especially for large multinational corporations. It can't be noon everywhere at once. And if it's an enterprise of 50 or 100,000-plus employees, the logistics of it just don't make sense to stop the company for 15 minutes or an hour."

page 1 2 3 4 next >>