April 9, 2010
By Jan Ozer Contributing Editor
Featured Articles

Choose Wisely: Selecting An Online Video Platform

A Six-Step Decision-Making Process

As you’ve read, I spoke to a number of OVP users and asked them all about the processes they went through to choose an OVP. Bruce Colwin of LegalMinds.tv had the most cohesive program––probably because he’s a serial entrepreneur who’s worked with OVPs in the past. His first step was to visit www.vidcompare.com, a comparison service for decision makers seeking tochose an OVP. Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen detailed VidCompare in an articlehe wrote last November (www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11533).

Briefly, VidCompare lets you search for OVPs using categories such asDelivery and Payment Structure and provides basic information such as afeature list, a pricing structure, and the date the company was founded.Even though he was familiar with the OVP market, Colwin foundVidCompare useful because the comprehensive service-provide listingcovered companies he shouldn’t miss. He estimated that he spent about 6hours total on the VidCompare site before making his decision.

Gayle Christopher from Oakstone Publishing also recommendsVidCompare. "We checked with VidCompare and found viable new optionsthat we didn’t know existed. The availability of the sites helps add rigor toour decision-making process and helps ensure that we don’t choose aprovider just because someone has used them before or knows someone atthe company."

After identifying potential options on VidCompare (which was Step 1),Colwin used information on VidCompare and the vendor sites to weed outservices that didn’t fit his business or pricing model (Step 2). Then, he readthe company information and any user reviews on VidCompare and polledhis business connections to see if any of them had any relevant experiencewith the remaining candidates (Step 3). Next, he contacted the candidatesto ask any remaining questions and to make sure that he understood theirpricing structures (Step 4).

Then, he requested trial accounts with the final candidates (Step 5).Over a period of a few weeks, he uploaded content, tagged it, embeddedthe video into browsers, and played them back on multiple computers.During this process, he found that one potential vendor had problems withWordPress that could have been a huge issue with some of his potentialclients. With another final candidate, he found the presales service lacking,which soured him on the prospect of its after-sales service.

Colwin wasn’t the only user who tried the OVPs before buying.According to Jay Simons, Atlassian created several trial accounts andfound significant differences in quality, video delivery performance,player load time, and the responsiveness of technical support duringthe trial period. In lieu of actual trials, AllHipHop.com’s Derek Frempongasked his final candidates to provide reference accounts; then, hecompared their video playback results from a number of differentconnections and locations. He also found substantial differences inresponsiveness and smoothness that helped steer him toward Kaltura.

Mel Aclaro, from real estate site www.isucceed.com, had narrowed downhis candidates to Marcellus.tv and one other. He chose Marcellus when histrials revealed that the site provided much better quality than the othercandidate. So even if you skip all the other steps of Colwin’s procedure, youshould definitely kick the tires before you choose your OVP.

As for Colwin’s procedure, after the trials, he consolidated his findingsregarding quality, usability, pricing, and customer service and then madehis decision (Step 6).