Coming of Age: 2006 Enterprise Year in Review

Sonic Foundry, a maker of webcast publishing appliances, launched server tools designed to better manage the content created on its MediaSite publishing devices. Likewise, Accordent continued its push into developing its media management platform that allows end users to search and manage rich media assets and track and measure viewer interaction with content.

The ability to better manage content makes enterprise webcasting a critical linchpin in holding together a range of other communications technologies. The systems now being deployed to archive and track online video events can be configured to capture and redistribute content developed using other technologies, such as video and web conferencing, says Accordent’s Newman.

"These are all complementary solutions that are not mutually exclusive," Newman says of webcasting, video conferencing and web conferencing. "And it’s in companies’ best interest to manage all of these centrally.

"Rather than exist as isolated applications, these technologies will all begin to fall under a single online communications umbrella," Newman says.

The Streaming-Conferencing Convergence
That type of outlook is in keeping with the way companies are now investing in online communications technologies. In general, companies that are spending on web conferencing and video conferencing solutions also are among the most likely to invest in online multimedia applications as well, according to Interactive Media Strategies’ survey results.

Plans for increasing spending on online multimedia in 2006, for instance, correlated tightly with pre-existing budgets for web conferencing deployments. Among companies spending less than $10,000 per year on web conferencing solutions, only 12% reported plans to boost spending on online multimedia capabilities in 2006. In contrast, among companies spending more than $100,000 per year on web conferencing, 55% reported plans to increase spending on webcasting solutions in 2006.

The correlation was strongest, however, among organizations that are boosting spending on web conferencing. Among those with plans to increase spending on these collaboration capabilities in 2006, 71% also reported intentions to boost budgets for webcasting as well.

Links between the worlds of online multimedia and traditional video conferencing are also strong. In general, companies that use traditional video conferencing frequently are more inclined to boost their spending on online multimedia technologies. At companies that use video conferencing for more than 10 events per year, more than 90% reported plans for expanding web multimedia investment in 2006. In contrast, less than one quarter of the companies not using traditional video conferencing reported plans for increasing 2006 spending levels for online multimedia technologies.

The sweet spot for enterprise multimedia platforms, Newman says, comes in the archiving of meetings and content now held primarily on a live basis on video conferencing and web conferencing systems. In this vision, enterprise multimedia solutions can emerge as a central hub for recording online events—regardless of the platform used to hold the meeting or create the content—and then making them available and accessible to broader audiences that can benefit from watching on an on-demand basis.

"Creating libraries of workplace content drives demand for a host of add-on capabilities, including security, content management, and other technologies that build upon the foundation of traditional enterprise multimedia solutions," Newman says.