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Enterprise Content Delivery Network Adoption is on the Rise

CMMA Blog

Enterprise Content Delivery Network Adoption is on the Rise

A recent white paper from research firm Metrigy, Enterprise Content Delivery Networks: For Video, and Beyond , found that enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) adoption has more than doubled since 2020 amongst the 900 organizations they surveyed. ECDNs are being used more than ever to deliver live video and are an essential tool for driving modern work. In this post we will highlight the key findings from the white paper, the reasons leading to the rise in ECDN adoption and factors enterprises need to consider when selecting an ECDN.

The Modern Workplace

Spurred by the pandemic, live video use has grown dramatically across organizations in all verticals. Nearly half of companies (45%) surveyed by Metrigy continued to increase video use through the end of Q3 of 2021, with no signs of slowing down. While at times challenging, the adoption of modern tools like live video has fueled a revolution in how and where we work. The office walls have been torn down and the modern workplace is now more digital than physical.

With the rise of hybrid and remote work, dispersed teams require a digital-first approach to effectively communicate and collaborate with one another. The simplest way to efficiently accomplish this is through live video. Metrigy’s study reinforces this reality, with 85% of respondents saying that video is either critical or important to their business’ operations.
video importance to business operations
From company-wide town halls to less formal announcements and daily meetings, video is the way information is shared. Ensuring messages are received is imperative for every business. With over 80% of Metrigy’s study participants using cloud-based meetings, webinars, and virtual event platforms, a network that is not optimized for delivering video is a liability.

New Network Architecture

The increase in demand for live video has caused the architecture of enterprise networks to be reimagined. In the past, poor network performance was often solved by “throwing bandwidth at the problem”– an inefficient, costly, and temporary solution. Video and other cloud-based applications require a more forward-thinking approach to solve performance issues economically and efficiently. By solving these issues on both fronts, it’s no surprise that ECDN adoption has consistently grown.

Metrigy found that successful businesses invest in expanded network services to support video with success being defined as those experiencing a higher return from their video investments.
network investment to support video
As with “throwing bandwidth at the problem”, blindly tossing money at network problems is not the answer. By investing in network technologies that work smarter, like ECDNs, companies not only improve network performance but also find significant cost savings. Metrigy’s research showed that participants using an ECDN to optimize video delivery saved an average of 22% annually on WAN costs.

While the cost savings and high ROI make ECDNs an attractive choice, their ability to meet the needs of enterprise networks plays a strong role in their growing popularity. Metrigy outlined eight requirements network services must meet to support the modern workplace:

  1. Improve network performance no matter the location, network access ability, or available bandwidth
  2. Optimize networks in a simple and intelligent manner that does not put added strain on network operators
  3. Reduced upfront and ongoing costs
  4. Provide analytics with insights into viewer experience, network performance, and engagement
  5. Securely distribute content with end-to-end encryption and access management
  6. Deploy quickly and easily to support ongoing digital initiatives
  7. Integration with existing network management platforms
  8. Ability to scale to keep pace with emerging and future collaboration technologies

Unlike traditional solutions, ECDNs can meet all these requirements–another reason adoption is growing Therefore, it’s no surprise that the majority of companies (60%) surveyed by Metrigy are using or plan to use an ECDN. Out of the companies with ECDNs in place, nearly half (44%) are planning to increase their use.
ECDN adoption plans

Critical Considerations

While there are many ECDNs on the market, not all are created equal. Metrigy recommends looking for these features when selecting an ECDN:

  • Flexible deployment models
  • Deep performance and engagement analytics
  • Native integration with video streaming platforms

Kollective’s ECDN, Edge Accelerator meets all these features and more. It is the only ECDN platform that offers complete coverage, ensuring high quality live video in simple and complex environments. From Zero Trust to traversing the Great Firewall of China, as your business’ needs grow, Kollective’s ECDN delivers. Kollective’s easy-to-use integration portal allows businesses to use their favorite streaming platform and our powerful analytics and intelligence platform supplies real-time, actionable event insights.

Kollective seamlessly integrates with front-end video applications like Microsoft Teams and Stream, Notified, NTT Studio, Qumu, Vimeo and more, to reliably deliver flawless live and on-demand video without affecting other business critical applications.

Kollective IQ/Edge IQ is the most advanced ECDN intelligence platform. Intuitive and customizable dashboards give insights into employee engagement, congestion levels across locations, and real-time event and network performance allowing quicker decision-making to address issues.

Optimize with an ECDN

The unique ability of ECDNs to optimize video delivery in a cost-effective, scalable, and easy to implement manner paired with the increasing use of video across the enterprise will continue to drive their adoption and make them an essential part of the modern business’s technology stack.

Choosing the right ECDN to meet the unique needs of your network is vital to ensuring a quality employee experience across locations, devices, and connections. Kollective’s Edge Accelerator offers the flexibility to cover even the most complex enterprise networks. Begin a free 30-day trial of Kollective ECDN Browser-Based peering to start scaling live video today.

The post Enterprise Content Delivery Network Adoption is on the Rise appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Webinar Recap: Employee Connectivity in Healthcare and Beyond

CMMA Blog

Webinar Recap: Employee Connectivity in Healthcare and Beyond

During our recent webinar Employee Connectivity in Healthcare and Beyond: Scaling Live Events to a Hybrid Workforce , a panel of experts from Microsoft, Kollective, and Children’s Mercy Hospital, had a roundtable discussion about how the pandemic and now hybrid work has transformed communications and collaboration. They reviewed the challenges faced by communications teams and network administrators when connecting a hybrid workplace with live events and covered strategies to build more inclusive communications. Learn how Kollective and Microsoft are working together to provide Healthcare companies with innovative solutions that address the needs of the modern workplace.

Panelists:

  • Host – Carson Heady – Microsoft, Director, Health Solutions – U.S. Health & Life Sciences
  • Matt Sims – Microsoft, Senior Customer Success Manager, Modern Communications – U.S. Health and Life Sciences
  • PJ Hartzell – Multi-media Content Producer at Children’s Mercy Hospital
  • Garrett Gladden – Kollective, V.P. of Product
  • Neal Lauther – Kollective, V.P. Global Technical Solutions

The Evolving Modern Workplace

The modern workplace has been reimagined. Hybrid and flexible work models have brought video to the forefront, making it the primary medium that businesses use to communicate and collaborate. Video’s growth in the enterprise has been significant. In July 2022 alone, Kollective delivered Teams Live Events to over 1.7 million viewers – a 15x increase in one year!
Microsoft Teams Growth

New Challenges

Since the pandemic, businesses have been confronted with new challenges when using live events to connect their distributed workforce. Neal Lauther, V.P. Global Technical Solutions at Kollective, identified three areas where they occur:

Running Events – Equipping yourself with the right tools is key to running successful live events.  Event producers and network administrators need to be laser focused on their objectives and properly prepared for events, regardless of their size. A few of the questions that need to be addressed before running an event include: Where are presenters connecting from? What kind of equipment do they have? What kind of content are they presenting? Are they familiar with the technology so they can run the event? These are just a few of the questions that need to be addressed prior to an event.

Delivering Events – Live events are now a preferred medium businesses use to deliver critical messaging. If an event fails and the messages don’t land, that is a problem for leadership and employees. Understanding where viewers are connecting from, if they are connecting remotely through a VPN, and if your network has the capacity to deliver content to those accessing it from the office, are a few of the considerations that need to be considered before running a live event.

Analyzing Events – Robust live event analytics are key to understanding how well an event performed. Having the data to prove whether employees were engaged, whether the event reached all necessary parties, and whether the quality was high, helps teams understand if there are issues that need to be addressed to ensure a better run during the next event.

Modern Collaboration Tools

To tackle these new communications challenges, modern tools are needed. Matt Sims, Senior Customer Success Manager, Modern Communications – U.S. Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft, described how Teams Live Events address these issues:

  • An advanced yet familiar producer experience to manage content and speakers
  • Scalability to support up to 10,000 attendees with options to support up to 100,000 view-only participants with the help of an ECDN
  • Support for asynchronous collaboration and consumption with VoD via Yammer and Stream
  • Built-in event analytics and the ability to integrate with an ECDN like Kollective for expanded insights to understand how people are connecting, where they are connecting from, and the quality of their experience

“The very clear design intent with Teams Live Events is to commoditize the toolkit for content creation, delivery and then consumption.”
– Matt Sims – Microsoft, Senior Customer Success Manager, Modern Communications – U.S. Health and Life Sciences

Emerging Content Delivery Challenges

The increased use of live events and hybrid work has led to delivery challenges and creative network solutions that have risen in response.

Network Complexity

In the modern hospital, there is a vast array of devices connecting to networks delivering critical and sensitive information. Oftentimes, sophisticated networks like these present hurdles when trying to deliver live events. There are numerous concerns to consider to understand how network complexity may impact deliverability:

  • Wireless networks – their design can be complex like tunneled or bridge connections
  • Devices can connect but where does that traffic go? Does it connect to a data center?
  • Users connecting from their workstation – is it wired or wireless, what kind of device are they using, and how is traffic being routed?
  • Remote users – are they using a company device or their own, are they secure, can they directly access cloud services, or do they need a VPN?

These challenges need to be understood and addressed before running live events. Many organizations are modernizing their network topology to embrace cloud services and allow users to connect from any location.

Security Standards

Matt Sims has found that security comes into every conversation he has with customers. To address these concerns, Microsoft Teams has security built-in from the ground layer. Taking a Zero Trust approach to security, Microsoft uses an identity-based security model with Azure Active Directory. This lends itself well to hybrid work, ensuring that one’s data and device are secure no matter where or how they connect. Explore Security and Microsoft Teams to understand how Teams follows security best practices and procedures.

SASE Environments

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is an emerging way of modernizing networks to support the hybrid workplace. Neal Lauther explained that the old way of setting up corporate networks does not consider the needs of modern workplace (e.g. addressing network complexity and security postures). Security is front and center with SASE and it meets high-security needs in a manner that is easy to turn on. It also provides networking policy and governance to cover the multiple ways hybrid and remote workers access content.
Kollective SASE

Kollective ECDN, as part of a SASE environment, delivers in the face of these network challenges by adapting to where the user is whether that is a VPN or a cluster location.

“Flawless live events, clear messages delivered, no impact to other critical services. That’s the goal.”
– Neal Lauther – Kollective, V.P. Global Technical Solutions

Inclusive Communications

Ensuring that every employee has equal access to high-quality live video is one of the primary concerns in the hybrid office. Whether employees are viewing a live event from the office, home, or a coffee shop, the event’s success depends on whether each attendee experienced a flawless, uninterrupted stream.

Reaching Every Employee

PJ Hartzell knows that reaching every employee in a hospital setting with live events has never been more important. At Children’s Mercy Hospital, the production team works with internal communications to execute a plan for upcoming events to ensure high in-person attendance for the event. For those unable to attend the event in-person, the production team immediately uploads the video to Microsoft Stream and notifies the organization that the event is available to view on-demand. Offering synchronous and asynchronous communications ensures that messaging gets to those who need it when and where they can access it.

Return to Office & Hybrid Work Planning

The modern workplace is continuously flexing to meet the needs of employees and businesses alike. To support companies shifting to hybrid work, Microsoft’s Work Lab has developed a series of guides called How to Hybrid that focus on the non-technological considerations of the return to office and hybrid work planning.

“We’re still working through all of these new challenges which are pretty exciting because it feels like we’re reengineering what we want work to be like for this new era.” – Matt Sims – Microsoft, Senior Customer Success Manager, Modern Communications – U.S. Health and Life Sciences

Collaborating With Stakeholders

Leadership is utilizing live events due to the simplicity and effectiveness of getting a message to land across a large group. Neal Lauther has noticed, “The ease has created the need.” Events are so easy to set up when the right systems are in place that they are shortening in duration and increasing in frequency.”

Children’s Mercy Hospital has seen a strong adoption of live events for one-to-many communications from the highest levels. Their CEO began a series during the pandemic called Live Connects to present information from high-level meetings to a broader audience to keep leadership in touch with the workforce.

Resources

Scaling Live Events Checklist – Download this checklist to develop an effective and measurable plan to scale live events to a hybrid workforce.

Microsoft Live Events Assistance Program – A free service offered to Enterprise customers that provides basic training as well as technical and non-technical consideration of how to run successful Teams Live Events

Microsoft Workshops – Microsoft Teams training to help employees connect in a hybrid workplace.

Kollective Free Trial – Start a 30-day free trial of Kollective ECDN in just six clicks to begin scaling Teams Live Events.

The post Webinar Recap: Employee Connectivity in Healthcare and Beyond appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Preventing Live Event Failures

CMMA Blog

Preventing Live Event Failures

During the COVID-19 pandemic, live video usage skyrocketed as organizations shifted from in-person to remote work. As companies return to the office full-time or in a hybrid capacity, video communications remain an integral tool to inform and engage the workforce. However, as employees return to in-person work, businesses have experienced live event failures. Many networks are not prepared for employees simultaneously streaming bandwidth-intensive content on-site. In hybrid models, employees are not coming to the office as regularly as they were pre-pandemic. However, when they do come, it is often en masse and unpredictable, creating peak demand problems for corporate networks that are challenging to anticipate and manage effectively.

These failures occur on networks that are not optimized for distributing the increased consumption of on-site video due to return to office plans and the rise of hybrid work. Luckily, these failures are preventable. With the right technology in place, effective testing, and live analytics, you can confidently deliver flawless live video across the enterprise.

Live Event Failures are on the Rise

Enterprise communications and IT teams that successfully delivered live events to a fully remote audience are now struggling as employees return to the office. Companies rely on live video to connect and engage with employees more than they did prior to the pandemic. Since February 2020, the time spent in Teams meetings has increased by 252% for the average user. This is problematic for many businesses as most pre-pandemic networks are not prepared for the increase in live video and the amount of bandwidth it requires. Streaming live events over networks that aren’t prepared to deliver video at scale risks event failures and can impact business-critical applications running on the same network.

Network Volatility Causes Live Event Failures in Hybrid Workplaces

In a hybrid work scenario, the number of employees on-site is in constant flux, giving businesses a false impression of their network’s capacity. We’ve seen companies with even a small fraction of their employees exceed the capacity of their corporate network while streaming video. However, the most common cause for network failures in the hybrid workplace is network volatility.

Network volatility refers to the change in demand that is placed on a network over time. Networks for businesses operating a hybrid work model may perform well during days of the week when the number of on-site employees is low. However, many businesses have coordinated in-person days in which a large percentage of the workforce comes to the office. Suddenly the network that performed well is at risk of failing when met with the increase in demand.

The Cost of Failed Live Events

Businesses invest time, money, and resources into live events. When live events fail, those efforts are wasted. The financial costs are reason enough to invest in systems to avoid event failures, but the communications repercussions can leave a lasting impact.

Live events deliver essential messaging, connect employees to leadership, promote company visions and values, and create organizational transparency and inclusivity. When employees can’t access these communications or are faced with a poor user experience, it is a lost opportunity to connect them to the company, leadership, and their peers. This lack of connection leads to lower engagement which, according to a recent Gallup report , costs $7.8 trillion in lost productivity across the globe.

Prevent Event Failures with Kollective

To prevent failed events, networks need to be prepared to accommodate live video with an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN), properly tested, and monitored during events. Kollective provides the tools you need to quickly and easily ensure your next event is a success.

Kollective Edge Accelerator

The modern business has unique network requirements that can be affected by a variety of circumstances like office locations and bandwidth availability. Kollective’s ECDN, Edge Accelerator , can optimize your network for live video delivery no matter how complex your environment. Edge Accelerator can flex to meet any network’s needs with three intelligent delivery solutions:

  • Browser-Based Peering – A WebRTC based solution that solves the most common live video delivery needs.
  • Agent-Based Peering – An agented solution that excels at delivering on-demand video and contains advanced security controls
  • Edgecache – A caching solution that brings video closer to the viewer that is useful for businesses that need to reach remote locations or connect with viewers in China

Network Readiness Testing

Once your network is prepared to deliver live events with an ECDN, Kollective’s Network Readiness Test can give you the peace of mind that your next event won’t exceed network capacity. Simulating a high-quality live event that replicates your event’s specific conditions gives you the opportunity to fine-tune prior to the live event. The Network Readiness Test provides detailed data on event performance:

  • Quality of Experience (QOE)
  • Bandwidth Savings
  • Peering Efficiency
  • Reach
  • Duration

Live Event Analytics

When you are ready to go live you can rest assured that you will have the information you need to make adjustments in real-time with Kollective’s Edge IQ Analytics. With an intuitively designed dashboard, Kollective Edge IQ Analytics allows you to quickly find the data you need to:

  • Track employee engagement
  • Monitor stream quality
  • Identify buffering by location
  • Track bandwidth usage

Live event failures can derail your efforts to connect the people in your organization. By incorporating an ECDN, preparing for events with network testing, and using real-time analytics to monitor performance, you can quickly and easily prevent event failures from plaguing your communications. If you are struggling to deliver a successful live video, start a free trial of Kollective’s Browser-Based Peering solution before your next event.

The post Preventing Live Event Failures appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Use Live Video to Encourage Collaboration Among Hybrid Employees

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Organizations all over the world were faced with an unprecedented challenge after COVID-19 forced nearly two-thirds of employees to work remotely . Without much warning, employers had to find a way to shift their entire staff to remote work. However, many were unprepared to face this unprecedented challenge.  

Since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the usage and demand for video collaboration tools has skyrocketed. Even so, with vaccinations ramping up and a return to office on the horizon, it’s clear that hybrid work will continue well into the future. Some employees will continue working from home in order to accommodate safety recommendations, where others will return to the workplace to take advantage of in-person collaboration and advanced technology. 90% of human resources leaders surveyed by Gartner said they plan to let employees work remotely at least part of the time, even after a vaccine is widely adopted. But regardless of where you’re working, one thing is certain – the modern workplace will never be the same.

FEELING CONNECTED 

When employees start trickling back into the office, most organizations will adopt a hybrid work model. For example, your Sales team may continue working from home, but your IT department will be in office. For this setup to function properly without leaving anyone behind, it’s up to you to keep communication lines open and make sure that everyone feels included and connected. 

A simple and cost-effective way to make sure your employees stay connected is with video communications. Most remote workers appreciate face time with their colleagues, and in-office employees will benefit from a streamlined communication platform. Given the new state of the hybrid workforce, you want every member of your team to feel included, regardless of location.  

Plus, if someone misses a meeting, video on demand (VOD) services allow employees to catch up on important meetings or company-wide communications even after the meeting has ended. The more connected teams feel, the better they’ll be able to work together. Research firm Gigaom says 87% of remote team members feel more connected to their team when they can use video conferencing.

INCREASING COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY 

Maintaining strong employee collaboration has been one of the largest workplace hurdles IT and Communications teams have had to climb during the pandemic. While convenient, communicating via email or an instant messenger can lead to miscommunications and unnecessary, time-consuming work. Instead of relying on text-heavy communications methods, utilizing a video conferencing software will allow both in-office and remote employees to quickly and clearly communicate with one another in a more collaborative way. 

In addition to being a way for employees to feel connected with one another, video meetings can be much more time-efficient, since the need for back-and-forth email chains are reduced. Many video conferencing programs, like Microsoft Teams , also allow for cross-collaboration and make file sharing, discussing, reviewing and sending documents a lot more streamlined, especially for employees who are working in different locations. 

MAXIMIZE TEAM BUILDING 

Enabling cohesion in the COVID age has been challenging. But one of the keys to building a high-functioning team is to establish trust and build rapport among your employees, even when not everyone is working together physically. Instead of deferring to email or chat, use video communication to better humanize the way we work together. Having the ability to actually look someone in the eyes and catch up before or after a meeting can make a significant difference in a hybrid team’s ability to bond with one another. 

If you’d like more insight on how video can help connect your distributed workforce, read our white paper “The Visible Boss.” We cover everything from tips for getting started to best practices from executives thrive in front of the camera. 

The post Use Live Video to Encourage Collaboration Among Hybrid Employees appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Pick the Right Bitrate for Your Next Live Video Event

bitrate

If you’ve spent any amount of time watching or participating in a live event over the last year, chances are you’ve noticed a difference in the level of engagement between events with clear video and perfect audio, and events where you can only hear every fifth word of what the presenter is saying.   

While it’s true that top-notch streaming equipment and high-speed Internet can lead to the perfect lag-free Live Event, there’s another factor that could be contributing to the quality of your steam — bitrate. 

WHAT IS BITRATE?  

To keep it simple, bitrate is the quality of the video or audio being streamed during your Live Event. It’s measured in kilobits per second (kbps), which means we’re looking at how many ‘bits’ of data you’re sending, and at what ‘rate’ (speed) they’re being sent. 

Higher bitrates typically use up more Internet bandwidth, so it makes sense that using a higher bitrate can improve video quality. However, selecting the highest bitrate without considering other factors like expected quality and video complexity is not the most efficient plan for your Live Event. Plus, if your network’s bandwidth is insufficient, most video streaming platforms will prioritize audio quality over video quality.  

SO, WHICH BITRATE IS RIGHT FOR MY LIVE EVENT?  

There are many factors that can impact your choice of bitrate. In addition to meeting the requirement dictated by whichever codec (software programs that encode or decode a video stream into a different type of stream) you’ve chosen, your decision will revolve around your organization’s preferred quality for your Live Event – the higher the bitrate, the better quality your Live Event will be. But the actual bandwidth consumption for every Live Event will vary based on video layout, video resolution, video frames per second, and whether you’re utilizing an Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN), like Kollective . When more bandwidth is available, quality and usage will increase to deliver the best experience. 

Assess your organization’s quality expectation for your Live Event. This boils down to how advanced the culture of video is within your organization and will depend on how expectations around video have been set previously. Over the last 12 months with the rise of remote work and increased video communications, most organizations probably have a more robust video strategy, so their employees expect Netflix and Hulu-quality Live Event experiences. In order to hold a high-quality Live Event, you have to choose a high enough bitrate to support the video complexity and motion content of the source you’re pushing to viewers. 

Here’s a breakdown of Kollective’s recommended bitrate based on desired resolution and frame rate:

Screen Shot 2021 03 11 at 10.56.13 AM 300x156 1


WHAT CONTRIBUTES TO LIVE EVENT QUALITY? 

Live Event quality takes both resolution and frame rate into consideration. Resolution is how many horizontal lines a frame of video has from top to bottom. The more lines of video, the “clearer” the picture is. Frame rate is the number of frames in one second of video. The more frames per second (fps), the smoother the video’s motion.  

When you’re selecting the proper frame rate and resolution for your Live Event, think about the content and purpose of the event, specifically related to motion and video complexity. The more motion your video has, the higher frame rate you want. For example, if you watch a basketball game at 10 frames per second, it will look like a cartoon flip book or strobe light. If you have a group of very animated presenters, it’s nice to have a decent frame rate to keep up with their motion, usually around 30 fps or higher.  

Video complexity refers to the level of detail in the video, so if you have multiple speakers in different panels during your event, of if you’re showing a slide presentation with small font or moving pieces, your Live Event is going to require a higher degree of complexity in order to meet your organization’s quality expectation.  

START STREAMING 

Once you’ve selected your bitrate, you’re good to start streaming your Live Video Event. Just remember that choosing the right bitrate can be a bit of a trial-and-error process and can change with each Live Event your organization presents depending on your ECDN capabilities, quality expectation and video complexity.  

If you’d like to learn how an ECDN helps improve the quality of your internal communications, read our Browser-Based Peering Solution Brief.

The post Pick the Right Bitrate for Your Next Live Video Event appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Network Capacity Planning for Live Video

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With large numbers of employees still working from home, many enterprises are adopting a video-based culture to aid in corporate communications. What is often missed however is the impact live video can have on your network. This is where network capacity planning comes in.

Network capacity planning helps network administrators understand a network’s shortcomings. Typically, it involves gathering data around:

  • Network traffic
  • Traffic type
  • Utilization rate
  • Infrastructure capacity

The purpose of network capacity planning in regard to video is to find out if your network can handle the demand for live and on-demand streaming.

In the last few months, we’ve heard a few justifications for why some organizations have avoided network capacity planning prior to running live events.

“We have plenty of bandwidth. We don’t even have half of our employees back in the office yet.”

“Video will be easy. We’re running a skeleton crew.”

Unfortunately, those arguments don’t hold up in the new normal. Here’s a real-world example from a Kollective customer that explains why.

10% of Employees Can Consume 70% of Network Capacity

A leading agricultural organization recently broadcast a virtual Town Hall Meeting to its globally distributed workforce of 45,000 using a top webcasting platform. Their corporate headquarters, normally alive with more than 5,000 employees, had less than 10% of its staff in office on the day of the event.

With so few employees onsite at HQ, the IT team was confident they could live stream the Town Hall without activating an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) to optimize bandwidth consumption.

The result? Seventy percent of HQ’s total network capacity was consumed by less than 10% of the workforce.

Given the physical distancing measures required in the workplace, each of those 500 employees participated in the Town Hall from their own computer, pulling the video stream directly from the source instead of gathering to watch in the HQ auditorium. This put immense strain on the network.

If you do the math, that means their network would not be able to support even 15% of employees streaming video from HQ.

What happens when the bulk of employees return to the office?

The Weight of Synchronous Video

The goal for every organization shifting to a video-based culture is to deliver a high-quality viewing experience that is inclusive to all employees, regardless of location, bandwidth or device. Although our customer may have network capacity at Corporate HQ, they also need to address remote office and branch locations that are the most likely to struggle with scaling live and on-demand video.

For context, live events created in Microsoft Stream get a fixed encoding profile:

  • 720p – 3.5 mbps
  • 540p – 2.2 mbps
  • 396p – 1.4 mbps
  • 288p – 850 kbps
  • 216p – 550 kbps
  • 192p – 200 kbps

What’s important to note is that video playback is not a static number and will change according to:

  • The video’s original resolution, bitrate and content
  • A user’s available bandwidth
  • Size of the player

You can estimate the impact video will have on your network by measuring and sampling the bandwidth of the content typically produced by your organization. Extrapolate that out across the total number of employees likely to view said content, and you can see how quickly the bandwidth required to stream video at scale adds up.

How an ECDN Optimizes Bandwidth Consumption

The simplest way to offset live video bandwidth consumption is with an ECDN. Kollective’s ECDN uses WebRTC technology to create a peering mesh between employees in a shared office location. Rather than everyone pulling content directly from the cloud and overwhelming your WAN (wide area network), a single peer gains access to the video and shares it with those nearby.

As you can see, a network without an ECDN is quickly overwhelmed by video – first by live playback and then by employees viewing the event on demand. This can have a dramatic impact not only on the viewing experience but also for business-critical applications that rely on the same network.

Network capacity spike

With an ECDN those network spikes are eliminated, which means you can be confident live video will not take down your network and the end user will have a high-quality viewing experience.

Small network capacity spike

See How Peering Works

Take the work out of network capacity planning with Kollective’s ECDN. Try our demo today to see how we can help you deliver 100% of video broadcasts at 1% the bandwidth.

The post Network Capacity Planning for Live Video appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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