Inktomi Networks with CUNA Mutual
On Tuesday, Inktomi (www.inktomi.com) announced that CUNA Mutual Group, a financial services company, would be using Inktomi's content management and content networking solutions for its corporate communications.
CUNA Mutual's new E-Line initiative is an in-house corporate streaming program that will include executive webcasts, corporate news, new employee orientation, and other e-learning programming.
"The addition of streaming media-based training and corporate communications allows CUNA Mutual to engage our employees in the immediacy of compelling media content, enabling us to enhance their productivity and motivation to learn while reducing travel expenses and streamlining our operations and processes," said Don Conley, Multimedia Specialist, at CUNA Mutual. "The deployment of Inktomi Media Publisher integrates content publishing, scheduled distribution, and content management into a single solution, providing us with an efficient way to improve the knowledge acquisition process and workday experience of our employees."
CUNA Mutual said it is planning a staged rollout of Inktomi Media Publisher, with the initial deployment serving several hundred employees at CUNA Mutual's Madison, Wisconsin headquarters. Later, the initiative will include all 5,000 employees of the company.
According to Steve Russell, VP of enterprise media solutions at Inktomi, CUNA Mutual was mostly interested in Inktomi's Media Publisher content management solution. "Once deployed, [companies] can create content incredibly quickly," said Russell.
Media Publisher essentially manages streaming events, from on-demand presentations to live video. Rather than use a large staff to manage a live feed, talk to encoders and servers, synchronize slides, and build Web pages, Media Publisher automates it all. Getting the video onto the authoring environment, however, is a separate task. Companies either need to use a production house, or just a webcam to capture video.
Russell spoke about Inktomi's experience using Media Publisher to do its annual guru training to inform employees and partners about new products. "Rather than a three-day conference, we did it online." In all, Inktomi had 60 online presentations created and distributed through Media Publisher. And Russell said all of that content is still online, ready to be used again. "You're three seconds away from opening any part of a presentation you missed."
Media Publisher comes from the acquisition of San Francisco-based eScene, which specialized in content management solutions. But Russell said that since the acquisition, Inktomi has updated the system to more tightly integrate with Inktomi's products. "Inktomi did a lot of engineering work to build hooks deep into the content networking platform," said Russell.