Special Sponsored Section: Executive Predictions

Peter Evans, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Internap Network Services
When it Comes to Enterprise Video Content, Simplicity is King
The consumer market has already exploded -- video is everywhere in every shape and form. However, on the business side, video content utilization is still relatively low and inhibited due to the cost and complexity associated with high-quality delivery. The race is on to see who will conquer these cost and complexity barriers first. We expect the winners to be visionaries who develop integrated approaches that allow the business to focus on content, and their end-user, and not the technology behind delivering video value to the broadest audience.

Leading CDNs are already starting to automate the entire process from video creation to management to delivery. New integrated and automated capabilities, such as single-upload transcoding and continuous bitrate adjustment, eliminate the need for organizations to incur the cost and complexity to customize and manage content for individual platforms. Combine this with route-optimization technology, which ensures optimal video delivery across the Internet, and the result is an end-to-end, highest-quality, highest-performing intelligent video streaming solution.

Perhaps more significant is the simplification of the entire workflow. (We told you simplicity is king.) From uploading to distribution to management to reporting and analytics, workflow becomes much easier to execute, freeing the enterprise to focus on creating value for their content, instead of wasting hours on technology.

Greater ease-of-use. Reduced cost. Enhanced user experience. These are the key areas CDNs are solving. When this happens, watch for enterprise video content to reach its full potential.

Imagine town hall meetings, keynote speeches, employee training videos, and industry webinars – all more intimate, more authentic, more engaging. It’s about to happen. And it’s all thanks to the true power of video.

Jay Fulcher, President and CEO, Ooyala
2010 will be an inflection year for our industry. Although media "convergence" has been bandied about for several decades now, the notion of "content everywhere" is becoming a reality. In 2010, there will be more people accessing content on a "connected" device than there were households with TVs in 1990. A large part of this growth will be fueled by connected TVs and mobile devices. This convergence did not happen overnight. In recent years, Telco's beefed up their networks to support large video files, agencies became increasingly comfortable with new ad formats, consumers became accustomed to new delivery vehicles for their content and content owners evolved their monetization models to be ready for a world where the consumer would be in control. The endless sea of content will require a new way for consumers to navigate and discover what is truly relevant to them. With the Ooyala platform, content owners will be able to personalize the experience for their consumers and in turn increase overall engagement and the revenue they can generate from their media assets.

Media companies are not alone in joining the party. Enterprises and SMBs are also using video as a communication vehicle to promote and disseminate information to customers, prospects and employees. We sit at the cusp of great change, and Ooyala, along with other video technology and services companies will be making convergence a reality in 2010.

Mike Glickenhaus, President and CEO, VMIX
Vision for 2010: The Return on All Things Video
Video is becoming crucial to virtually every organization and business strategy. Yet the novelty of online video is starting to wear off, leaving a demand on the part of enterprises and end users for a higher quality video experience. Whether your site is consumer-driven or business-to-business, your ability to engage and interact with site visitors depends almost entirely on building a positive experience.

From source material through variable encoding to publishing and delivery—be it on-demand through the use of adaptive technology or mobile live streaming—quality makes a material difference.

At the same time, portability and flexibility are key to delivering results. Mobile and remote upload capabilities, as well as multiple delivery options are vital, and the ability to incorporate user or employee-generated content is essential. No one size fits all and being able to create custom solutions, tailored to the needs of your clients and coupled with best practices, is critical for success. Every organization expects some kind of return on investment, be it monetization, branding, engagement or increased efficiency.

Finally, as the industry starts to come of age, organizations will insist on working with partners that can deliver comprehensive, integrated video solutions. Video platforms must include everything from upload, encode and media management to multi-format delivery, rich advertising and monetization options, as well as internal sharing, syndication and analytics. At VMIX, we’re focused on delivering these solutions to you—giving you the best quality video, the most useful analytics, and a total solution that meets your business needs.

Tim Green, CEO, Eyepartner
Tim Green and his Eyepartner team are known as The Machine Behind the Stream.

When Tim started Eyepartner in 1996 the business plan focused on designing and building web applications for customers. Early on, Tim realized that the industry was moving towards video delivery solutions and shifted the focus of the company to streaming video. In 2001, using Macromedia Flash, Eyepartner delivered a community broadcasting portal with live video streaming, interactive chat and VOD content.

Since then, the company has evolved product lines including, but not limited to, launching h.264-based HD broadcaster (patent pending) and Mobile Streaming applications. 2009 was a banner year for Eyepartner during which time the company developed and launched new products including Monster Encoder, their learning management system Torch LMS as well as expanded their first-in-class hosting networks to Germany, South Carolina and Hong Kong.

The Eyepartner team is looking forward to even a brighter 2010. Eyepartner plans on meeting industry challenges every day by staying creative and utilizing the latest technology to build cutting edge solutions to meet their customers’ expectations. One such challenge has been combining Adobe Flash with Microsoft Silver Light to provide the end user with a seamless transition between the content originating from the competing technologies.

Being a self-funded private company, Eyepartner is very keen on growth and profitability. Tim Green is excited about Eyepartner’s steady growth in such a challenging time for competitors. Eyepartner has experienced profitability and increases in our license sales, custom development as well as Gobyt hosting services. 2010 could not look brighter for Eyepartner due to breakthroughs within the R&D lab and is positioned for explosive growth in 2010.

Paul D. Hamm, President & CEO, Endavo Media
Will the commercialization of "over the top" (OTT) video services to multiple screens become a reality in 2010? We think so. But while we all know technologies exist today to deliver video to multiple screens – broadband, consumer devices, video compression/encoding, delivery platforms — more is still needed. Content aggregation, management and distribution of OTT must be made simpler and profitable for content and service providers to embrace "3-Screen" service models.

At Endavo Media, we’ve integrated our media management system to achieve "simplified roll-out" of 3-Screen OTT video services in 2010. By making it easy for service providers to deploy and consumers to access these services, adoption rates will increase.Of course, content is still king and solid marketing strategies are essential, so we’ve also been working to enable cross-platform distribution and marketing strategies to help providers further accelerate consumer adoption.

We believe commercial OTT video could soon begin generating serious dollars — TDG predicts OTT pay video revenue will grow from $1B in 2009 to $5.7B in 2014. Other indicators suggest significant growth in online and mobile video advertising, so the big trends are moving in favor of commercial OTT video services growth.

Every day we see our clients successfully delivering ad-based, sponsored, premium, subscription, and syndicated video services - and they are generating revenue. But we believe greater success will come to those who can realize simplicity in aggregating, managing, and commercializing multi-platform video services. Simplicity…and profitability will motivate content providers, broadcasters, and telcos to get serious about an OTT strategy.

Ray Hood, CEO, Qumu, Inc.
Bold leadership made voice communications a universal workplace tool. With virtual collaboration increasing, video will become as universal as voice in the workplace.

Effective collaboration between knowledge workers is the backbone of the new work environment. These knowledge workers need information at their fingertips in order to succeed.

As work shifts from the office to the remote employee, and as travel budgets decline in the face of environmental and cost concerns, organizations must find a way to optimize collaboration. Today, the combination of video technology with social media and collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint delivers information to employees – and real business value to the whole enterprise.

A true democratization of video is occurring. Cost-effective and habit-compatible video resources, demanding no infrastructure changes or new training, have emerged. Easy-to-use production tools, such as Qumu Create and low-cost USB cameras, make every PC a studio.

Enterprise video solutions must include workflow processes that empower the responsible management of this new rich media. An easy-to-use, secure, administrator-controlled employee-generated content (EGC) portal turns this "employee built" knowledge base into a collaborative resource that’s valuable for daily knowledge transfer.

Video is becoming as pervasive and easy to use as voice. We’re witnessing a convergence of video technologies: professional broadcasting, video conferencing, video streaming, and EGC are facets of a single evolving, engaging communications system. The leaders who put this convergence at their employees’ fingertips will see productivity gains drive the financial reinvigoration of the enterprise in 2010.

Jim Janicki, President & CEO, Ignite Technologies, Inc.
In 2010, companies will become confident in video-based communications as the way to work. Technology advances fueled by ease of use – such as Flip Video Phones – and the desire to self-select when and how to connect and contribute will drive video-based communications to become instinctive. Together, these two drivers will accelerate the requirement for more robust video delivery solutions to support the network technology burden.

Today’s executives now understand the needs of the digital native employees that are driven by collaboration and who value casual and frequent communication. The employees of the future will be dynamic communicators who will work at companies that have deployed simple, affordable, digital technology solutions to support their everyday forms of communication; e.g. YouTube for the Enterprise.

At Ignite, we enable our customers to continue to innovate and focus on developing the best possible message while we manage the medium for delivery. We address the challenges of delivering video and rich media communications to a distributed and highly mobile workforce while balancing network bandwidth and connectivity challenges with security requirements. Whether our customers want to view their content online or offline; at work, home, or on the road; or on their laptop, desktop, or mobile device, our delivery platform ensures secure, timely delivery of content anywhere at any time. Additionally in 2010, we encourage the consolidation of the content delivery market from a technology-based market to a solutions-based market. Customers will greatly benefit from an integrated ecosystem of solutions meeting their needs and addressing the lifecycle of content from creation to publishing, delivery, tracking, and reporting.

Doug Junkins, Chief Technology Officer & VP, IP Engineering, NTT America
I have been involved with the development of our core global IP network for over a decade. While 2009 saw many businesses affected at some level by economic issues, the long history of exponential growth and traffic demand on the Internet continued.

Globally, video continued to be the largest driver of bandwidth demand, both from content providers and consumer broadband users alike.

As broadband speeds continue to increase and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments become more ubiquitous in North America, video will continue to fuel this growth, and the explosion of high-definition (HD) video will be the icing on the cake. Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic has shrunk tremendously from what we saw between 2005 and 2007, as the quality and increase in availability of online media has met the demands of viewers.

In addition, we saw tremendous growth in Latin America in 2009 as broadband access continued to grow in the market and, given the rate of infrastructure investment in the region, I foresee this growth continuing. The broadband penetration in Latin America and other regions outside the US has created massive demand for rich content abroad, and much of this content still comes from the US. The sheer size of content being delivered by the largest content providers will necessitate the move to 100GigE for some as the initial platforms become available in 2010, while others will still have to wait for 2011 and cheaper optics prices to make the investment worthwhile.

What does this all mean? 2010 will be another exciting year for our industry with Internet usage scaling new heights.