Unleashing the Power of Enterprise Video: Finding Your eCDN Match
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Companies of all sizes are looking to video to elevate internal and external communication. By building video content strategies, they aim to meet specific needs, such as video on demand for communication, compliance requirements, training, onboarding, and customer communications.
Using these strategies, companies are seeing the benefits of video. Correspondingly, organizations are also seeing that they must develop strategies for the delivery of video. Simply put, how to make video flow efficiently across their networks, to all viewers often on diverse playback devices. Companies are finding the need for enterprise content delivery networks (eCDN) to deliver their content while protecting their networks.
Let’s discuss how you can hit the play button on your enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) solution without a complex setup or reset.
Technical and Financial Hurdles To Consider Before You Roll the Camera
Although the initial decision to implement a video strategy should not be taken lightly, it’s easier to observe the benefits today than it was a few years ago and, therefore, less challenging to take this step with conviction. We already know that company events and live video training drive employee engagement, and webinar analytics can even help fine-tune your process.
However, getting excited about captivating audiences or saving resources is one thing. Setting up the actual infrastructure is another, as it comes with countless considerations. Here are just a few to keep in mind when choosing your eCDN solution:
- Complex network infrastructure: Your eCDN needs to integrate or overlay your current network architecture and topology. The eCDN should be easy to configure and manage while efficiently distributing videos.
- Scalability: As your business grows, the technical framework supporting your video solution will have to adapt, even if it does so in the background. Consider how easily your solution can accommodate increased network traffic and additional (possibly remote or hybrid) users.
- Compatibility: Ensure that your eCDN solution is compatible with your existing hardware, software, and network protocols to prevent inefficiencies and complications in deployment.
- Security and compliance: While the extent to which these factors affect you will change by industry, they should always be a top priority. Look for easily adjustable security features that can map to your requirements regarding encryption, access controls, and compliance with industry regulations such as FedRAMP, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR.
- Content accessibility: Remember that content needs to be accessible to users across different geographical locations, devices, and network conditions. Then, evaluate how well each eCDN solution optimizes content delivery.
- Network congestion: Consider your business’s natural daily rhythm. Your eCDN should help alleviate network congestion by efficiently delivering content. Evaluate features aimed at reducing congestion during peak usage times.
- Zero-trust networks: If your organization follows a zero-trust security policy, ensure that your eCDN of choice aligns with its principles by providing secure access and verification mechanisms for users, no matter which device they’re using.
- Monitoring and analytics: Effective monitoring and analytics tools are essential for tracking the performance of your eCDN, identifying issues, and optimizing content delivery. Look for solutions that offer comprehensive monitoring and reporting capabilities.
- Vendor selection: Make sure you choose a reputable eCDN vendor with a proven track record in your industry. Consider factors such as vendor stability, customer support, and user feedback. In some cases, free consultations or testing a proof of concept may help support your decision.
- User experience: Ultimately, your eCDN solution should enhance the user experience by delivering content quickly and reliably. Evaluate the impact of your eCDN on load times, buffering, and overall user experience.
- Training and support: Ensure that your team has access to adequate training and support resources to effectively deploy and manage the eCDN solution. Vendor-provided training and responsive support can be crucial to keeping your business running smoothly.
If everything goes according to plan, your eCDN solution will serve you and your team for a long time. So, it’s best to view it from as many angles as possible before jumping into the deep end. Define and prioritize benchmarks based on your business model and team’s preferences. That will prevent you from falling for general recommendations and allow you to tailor a solution that meets your unique needs.
Meet Our Star: Universal eCDN to the Rescue
We’ve worked with various industries long enough to fine-tune our solutions so they reflect a range of challenges. The result: Vbrick Universal eCDN.
Thanks to our platform’s support for both HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), we can ensure that your video content is available to the widest audience, in your chosen format, and on any device. That way, your team doesn’t need to actively think of the best video player for internal training videos or live streams. Employees can simply use what they’re already familiar with and enjoy a great overall experience.
We didn’t call it “Universal” for fun, though. Vbrick Universal is the only eCDN solution on the market with three advanced eCDN technologies – peer-to-peer, edge caching, and multicast – that can be used independently or leveraged together for optimized video delivery. This versatility makes our platform the best choice to improve scalability and reduce network congestion while enjoying better content delivery performance.
For those looking for even more flexibility, our purpose-driven software development kit (SDK) allows for the integration of additional platforms and tools. At this level of customization, embedding your existing network infrastructure while meeting compatibility and compliance requirements is a breeze.
However, not every scenario requires a complex setup, so it’s important to keep yours as lean as possible while including all the functionality you need.
Designed With Your Safety in Mind
During day-to-day operations, your workers might handle lots of different files. One common problem that arises, especially with remote teams, is latency, leading to poor content delivery performance. Vbrick can address issues related to CDN backhaul by leveraging peer-to-peer technology. For remote offices or viewers, Vbrick provides edge caching as part of the Universal eCDN. With this capability, copies of videos can be captured and cached, reducing bandwidth needs and quickly responding for subsequent requests.
Video distribution solutions, while focused on bandwidth reduction and viewer quality, must also fit the security posture of our customers. To that end, Vbrick solutions are suitable and customizable for zero-trust environments. Even if you’re trying to bridge the gap between complex legacy network environments and user access controls suited for productivity and privacy, we’ll give you the right tools for the job. Naturally, all our services go across HTTPS, thus providing transport encryption, and we further protect all your data packages through strong access controls, even within our EVP’s most basic setup. If you need more fine-tuned control over your security features to meet compliance requirements or internal safety standards, Vbrick Universal eCDN can provide you with the right amount of flexibility for the job.
Lastly, how do you know if you’ve met your eCDN distribution strategy goals? Analytics provide the ability to track performance or just gain insights into your team’s usage patterns. Vbrick Universal eCDN comes with integrated analytics, both at the event and streaming levels and down to individual viewers. With this data, you can inform your next stage of business growth or fine-tune future engagement strategies.
Lights, Camera, Engagement! What’s Next for You?
Where do we go now? First define a clear set of strategies, which then is developed into an informed plan. With video distribution it’s important to track your progress. So, set some milestones, benchmark progress, and test, test, test.
Solving both your business and technical strategies while distributing video across an eCDN seems daunting. It doesn’t have to be — we can help.
If you’d like to learn more about how Vbrick can help with your eCDN needs, schedule a demo today.
