Enterprise Business Video Adoption Trends and Hurdles

For more than five decades, video has been established as an entertainment medium, a lean-back living room experience. Using it as a critical tool in an enterprise business environment is poorly understood, said Steve Vonder Haar, Research Director of Interactive Media Strategies as he launched the Business Video Expo at ITEXPO in Miami, Florida.

Most employers have shied away from offering video in the workplace because it's traditionally been seen as a waste of time. If my employees are watching videos at work, then they're goofing off, goes the basic assumption.

Another big issue with video in the business environment is that it's commonly been seen as an elite service. For production, you needed a lot of high-end equipment, and to distribute you needed satellites. It was only a very expensive offering that was made available only for the top employees within the organization. Unlike the telephone, it wasn't available to everyone. It still isn't.

Video is a game changer for business communications

We have four new benefits of business video:

• Flexibility – Can offer it as live streaming or on demand
• Accessibility – Anybody can create it or watch it
• Immediacy – Can distribute in real time
• Versatility – Can be used in a variety of different ways

Because of all these newly found benefits, there's been a sharp increase in business video production and usage. According to the 2011 IMS Enterprise Web Communications Survey, one-third of all corporations say they're using videos at least once a week. In addition, firms with video budgets over $500,000 has grown 20 percent in a little over a year. 64 percent of companies plan to use more video this year.

Business video is not a media form, it's data

Given the demands it puts on IT and the interactivity possible, video needs to be managed as a data type, said Vonder Haar. If you think about it that way, then you look at it more than just what's on the screen, but all the software that goes around that. There are many issues that businesses have to consider when they're deploying video.

Hurdles for Enterprise Video Adoption:

According to responses to the IMS' study, there are 13 very important technical issues surrounding video, ranked from most to least important (although all are considered important):

1. Network Security
2. Content Security
3. Ability to embed video
4. Search and discovery
5. LDAP Integration
6. Content Workflow management
7. Transcoding to multiple devices
8. Ability to track viewership
9. Ability to edit content
10. Enable upload of self produced videos
11. Ability to distribute to mobile devices
12. Automate search engine submissions
13. Social Media Integration

With all these concerns and desires, creative apps in video are emerging and usage is expanding. Ultimately, technology and software is adding value to video, what was formerly just seen as a medium. As a result, video budgets are growing, said Vonder Haar.