Commentary: Are We There Yet?

The events of September 2001 should have at least provided a mea culpa for streaming technology companies who knew that surveillance was a viable vertical. Many streaming companies failed to heed the early signs of consolidation in the central station monitoring market in mid 2000. Even those who did respond to the research findings that several consultants published were dubious that surveillance was big enough to pursue with any vigor and that surveillance and monitoring would be a good fit within a streaming media industry–until the creation of the Homeland Security department.

That streaming is still viable and still emerging is due solely to technology maturation—the fact that codec and bandwidth delivery ratios are improving. In its quest for ubiquity, streaming has stagnated and its growth and acceptance has been arrested because many still have a myopic vision of a streaming industry with limited, ill-defined verticals. As a result, many verticals sit just beyond our field of vision, untapped, even today.

The sooner we correct this vision impairment, removing the "industry" cataracts, the sooner we will see streaming flourish as an effective tool in the communications toolbox of many vertical markets. Streaming will best evolve in the enterprise not from the "wow factor" of one particular "killer application" but from myriad and disparate habits formed in more personal and secure environments, combined with positive experiences that augment existing workflows in numerous verticals with stable, easy to use technology.

I look forward to doing my part to accelerate the assimilation by using this space from time to time to note those companies who have worked to integrate their products and services so tightly into existing workflows that the technologies have almost become transparent. Upon returning to a day-to-day focus on streaming, I’ve been delighted to see several companies simplifying tasks and solving customer problems that are not on the surface streaming problems, but whose resolution addresses major workflow annoyances or inefficiencies identified by experienced workers in these verticals. These streaming companies are beginning to be amply rewarded for their emphasis on finding an underserved or untapped niche.

RIP, streaming industry. Vive les verticals!