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How Comms and IT Can Work Together to Streamline High-Quality Video Distribution

Best Practices

Leading a Communications team at an enterprise organization means you work cross-functionally with multiple departments, including the IT team. Although your goals may be different, when it comes to corporate communications, you share a common objective: Achieving a high-quality meeting experience for all employees on your network and ensuring delivery of a clear and concise message to your organization. In order to meet those goals, Kollective Technology recommends that both teams work together to make a few important decisions when it comes to your tech stack.  

Using the Right Tools 

With so many innovative workplace communication tools to choose from, it can get overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. From applications like Microsoft Teams, built for seamless collaboration and communication, to your basic email or instant messaging program, there’s quite a long list to choose from.  

Sometimes these tools can be more of a burden than a benefit, especially if they’re not streamlined. Your team may primarily communicate big updates with your organization via email platform A, but when it’s time for a company-wide all hands meeting, your team prefers to run communications on Platform B because it has a live video function. When you use multiple communication platforms, it’s easy for employees to miss messages and get frustrated. More than half of workers say they feel overwhelmed by having to use multiple communication platforms , which is something that can be easily avoided.  

Selecting a single tool like Microsoft Teams allows for inter-department collaboration. With a single tool, you can deliver your message in a high-quality format and meet the needs of both the Communications and IT teams. After you’ve done your research, get in touch with your organization’s lead network architect and work together to select the video communications tool that meets your organization’s needs.  

Setting Expectations 

Not all departments “speak the same language” but if you want your company-wide communication to be successful, you’re going to have to find a way to effectively work with your friends in IT. One way to do so is by setting expectations up front. 

Examine what kind of user experience (UX) you want for your employees. UX is critical to the success of video communications because it asks things like:  

  1. Was the viewer able to watch event with limited interruptions? 
  2. How was the video and audio quality of the meeting? 
  3. Did the viewer understand the message that was being communicated?  

When both your Communications and IT teams have to report back to executive sponsors on the success of the event, UX is something you’ll need to include. But level setting UX expectations can be tricky, which is why Kollective has a formula that will help cross-functional teams work together to manage executives’ expectations. Kollective takes variables like time zones, survey response rate, job title, family, and attendance history into consideration when calculating expectations.  

It’s important for the Communications and IT teams to collaborate on expectations for live video events, setting clear roles and responsibilities ensures the best live video event experience for your employees. After you’ve set expectations and executed your first event, it’s time to dive into analytics .  

Diving into Analytics 

Analytics are critical to successful enterprise video strategy because they identify both wins and opportunities for improvement. To get the most detailed look into live event performance, you want a tool that gives you real-time analytics. These are the metrics that will provide the greatest insight: 

  • REACH SCORE: Sum of the number of reported users who viewed the content and the number of anonymous viewing sessions. Reach score provides insight into the total number of unique individuals reached by a live event.  
  • AVERAGE VIEW DURATION: The average amount of time a viewer was reported to have watched the event. Average view duration helps gauge company engagement when compared to baseline metrics.  
  • QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE (QOE) SCORE: Time spent displaying video relative to the total time spent both displaying video and buffering. It quantifies the quality of a live event giving insight into buffering and network bottlenecks.  
  • PEERING EFFECIENCY: Normalized percentage of bytes delivered via peering measures how efficiently network-connected devices transmit live video. 
  • BANDWIDTH SAVINGS: Percentage of bytes delivered via peering highlights ECDN effectiveness and network capacity.  
  • GEOGRAPHIC CONSUMPTION: Country-specific video deliveries displayed as a percent of total deliveries for all content on a scale of 0% to 100%. This figure gives global enterprises the opportunity to see how messaging is received globally.  

For your Communications Team, analytics like reach score, geographic consumption and average view duration are most helpful when breaking down what content employees engaged with and how engaged they were based on location. For the IT team, learnings from QOE score, peering efficiency and bandwidth savings will help quantify how well the meeting tech worked and give insight on what improvements need to be made for next time.   

Set Your Enterprise Video Strategy 

Now that you’ve picked a platform, outlined expectations, and know which analytics are important, you’re ready to finetune your enterprise video strategy. Kollective offers organizations with 1,000+ employees a free one-hour virtual workshop with one of our Event Services Consultants. During this session, you’ll learn: 

  • Live event best practices to ensure success 
  • Advice and links to helpful live event resources 
  • And, if you are a Microsoft O365 customer, a copy of the Kollective Live Event Playbook for Microsoft Teams Live Event 

Streamlining your workplace communication tools and working with your IT team is imperative for curbing burnout and running an efficient business. Let Kollective show you how your Communications and IT teams can strategize and work together to deliver successful, high-quality live events today.  

The post How Comms and IT Can Work Together to Streamline High-Quality Video Distribution 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 .

To view our Partner blog, click here

How to Optimize Your Network for Live Video in 60 Seconds

browser-based peering

If you want to deliver live video to all your employees but don’t want to invest in hardware, download software or purchase additional bandwidth, you need Kollective Browser-Based Peering . Our enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) is powered by WebRTC technology – that means all you need to get started is a browser.

Signing up for a free trial of Kollective is so easy, it can take as little as 60 seconds. Here’s the proof: 

 

Choose the right ecdn

When optimizing your network for live video, make sure you pick the ECDN that will scale with your business. Kollective Browser-Based Peering will help you exceed expectations for high-quality events by delivering buffer-free video to every employee, regardless of their location, device or bandwidth capacity.  

WHY KOLLECTIVE BROWSER-BASED PEERING?

  • Simplicity: Auto-provision your ECDN trial in 60 seconds. Kollective is the ONLY WebRTC solution that lets you sign up, choose your integration, configure it, and try it immediately – for FREE!  
  • Intelligence: Confidently deliver high-quality video streams. Our browser-based solution uses smart peering algorithms that tune to your network, delivering the intelligence you need – no agent required.  
  • Control: Scale live video to the network edge. From out-of-the-box configurations to advanced bitrate and playback controls, Kollective puts the power of peering in your hands.  
  • Analytics: Customize live events and network insights. Instantly see your aggregate performance metrics or dig into the data down to a single node or endpoint with Kollective IQ Analytics. 

STAY ON THE FOREFRONT OF ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND SECURITY

With enterprise video gaining traction worldwide – it’s safe to say video communications are likely a focus of your organization’s 2021 digital transformation goals . Kollective makes it easy to save bandwidth and deliver high-quality video, whether your personnel are working physically distanced in the office, remotely or at home. 

In addition to saving your organization up to 99% of bandwidth, Kollective Browser-Based Peering is Secure by Design. Our ECDN uses standard web-based protocols with all data transfers encrypted and signed. We do not receive, store or process customer content, nor are we able to decrypt the source content.

MAKE SMARTER DECISIONS FASTER

Kollective IQ is the only enterprise-ready analytics and intelligence platform intuitively designed for the way you work. Whether you’re a network administrator, manager of a corporate communications team or a video producer, Kollective IQ is designed with intuitive workflows that simplify data exploration to help you make intelligent decisions, fast.  

In addition to standard network and event workflows, Kollective IQ lets you to choose which data sets you want to highlight. Create the custom dashboards, metrics and visualizations that align with your business goals and then save them for future reference.  

Kollective IQ makes it easy to package and send data when and where you need it. Easily automate your data imports with simple data export tools and database integrations, connecting Kollective IQ to the leading business intelligence platforms on the market. 

ADD KOLLECTIVE TO YOUR NETWORK

Now that you know more about Kollective Browser-Based Peering, it’s time to add it to your network. Sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The post How to Optimize Your Network for Live Video in 60 Seconds appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Teams Live Events Buffering Fix: Peer-to-Peer Streaming

browser-based peering

When distributing important video communications at scale, Teams Live Events is your organization’s most valuable tool, but buffering can ruin the experience for even the most committed employees. Make sure you keep them engaged by using peer-to-peer streaming to deliver the highest quality video at the lowest possible bandwidth.

How Video Buffering Impacts Employee Engagement 

Employee engagement is an important factor in workplace satisfaction and productivity. Interactive live events allow yous to effectively communicate with your team in a way that feels connected and collaborative for employees. When Teams Live Events go off without a hitch, they create an environment that feels more inclusive. However, when buffering is more common than the video itself employee engagement is negatively affected. 

As the distribution of live events and enterprise video communication grows, user expectation for high quality will increase as well. According to Understanding the Impact of Video Quality on User Engagement , “a 1% increase in buffering ratio can reduce user engagement by more than three minutes for a 90-minute live video event. We also see that the average bitrate plays a significantly more important role in the case of live content than VoD content.” 

IBM Watson Media also says 53% of employees report that video buffering is the largest detriment to workplace productivity, and lagging internet bandwidth is largely to blame.

What Causes Live Video Buffering? 

We’ve all experienced the dreaded, seemingly endless buffering icon during an important town hall or CEO update, but why does this happen most often in large, company-wide meetings? It’s simple – unstable internet connectivity due to an overloaded network. 

Enterprise organizations with multiple offices and satellite employees understand and have likely dealt with the challenges that come with broadcasting live and on-demand video to a distributed workforce. Most corporate networks do an excellent job handling the demand for one-to-one voice and video calls, but things can – and often do – go south quickly when trying to deliver video messages at scale.

Think of your network like a highway on college football gameday. Every other day of the week, it’s fine; traffic flows seamlessly. But on gameday, the hour before kickoff, traffic is a nightmare. What normally suffices as a two-lane road, needs to be expanded substantially to meet the needs of ticket holders. 

The same is true of your network. Without a solution in place to optimize it), the more employees who log on to participate in a live event, the more network bandwidth is needed, which can lead to substantial buffering – or even a crash.

How to Fix Teams Live Events Buffering

The quickest and most scalable way to fix r Teams Live Events buffering is to invest in an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) powered by browser-based peering.

With a peering solution, your dispersed workforce can stream Teams Live Events without overloading and impacting your network. Browser-based peering uses your existing network – and an intelligent peer-to-peer architecture,to deliver content to your organization more efficiently. No hardware to buy, no software to install. Kollective’s browser-based peering solution scales these communications across your network, allowing you to deliver high-quality live video to your entire organization and achieve 100% delivery at only 1% the bandwidth. It’s so simple you can be up and running in just six clicks.

Image showing peering with Kollective ECDN

To see how it works, demo Kollective’s browser-based peering for yourself.

The post Teams Live Events Buffering Fix: Peer-to-Peer Streaming appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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2021 Digital Transformation Trend: SD-WAN Optimization for Live Video

CMMA Blog

One of the many things 2020 has shown us is the escalating need for digital transformation across all enterprise organizations. An increased IT spend focused on network optimization is absolutely necessary as your workplace transitions back to the office post-COVID, because while some pre-pandemic aspects of communication will remain the same, the need for video communication and expanded network bandwidth will increase at least tenfold.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION POST-COVID

Returning to the office to then deal with tech debt, dated software and outdated processes is an unnecessary hassle that you don’t have time to deal with. Companies that have started their transformation journeys are ready for the challenge of managing digital communications when the workforce returns.

Among the changes that we’ll see within the next year will be the move to a more distributed workforce and workplace, with digital experiences at the forefront, which will require multiple technologies and platforms connected by digital workflows. This will be the case no matter which one of your offices your employees are working in.

HOW IT BUDGETS WILL CHANGE IN 2021

As the need for digital transformation increases, so will worldwide IT spending. In 2021, spend is expected to reach $3.8 trillion, an increase of 4% from 2020, according to research firm Gartner . Specifically, enterprise software spending should also see tremendous growth in 2021 with an anticipated gain of 7.2%, due to enterprise digitalization efforts.

“In the 25 years that Gartner has been forecasting IT spending, never has there been a market with this much volatility,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “While there have been unique stressors imposed on all industries as the ongoing pandemic unfolds, the enterprises that were already more digital going into the crisis are doing better and will continue to thrive going into 2021.”

THE ERA OF CLOUD END-USER GROWTH

When enterprise organizations increase IT spend, Gartner also expects growth in public cloud to be sustained through 2024. In fact, recent Gartner survey data indicates that almost 70% of organizations using cloud services today plan to increase their cloud spending in the wake of the disruption caused by COVID-19.

“As CIOs think more strategically about how to lay the foundations to support a return to growth, it is clear that the move to digital and associated services will play a big role for organizations in the future,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “Cloud adoption therefore becomes a significant means to stay ahead in a post-COVID-19 world focused on agility and digital touchpoints.”

Network Impact of Increased Cloud Adoption

SD-WAN is a crucial technology that businesses need to invest in to thrive in the “new normal.” As cloud-adoption becomes more prevalent moving forward, the need for SD-WAN technology will continue to increase. Here’s why:

INCREASED DEMAND FOR ROBUST VIDEO QUALITY:

The days of in-person all hands meetings have been traded with back-to-back video calls. While businesses are planning to return to the office in the future, many will have employees stream enterprise video and live events at their individual workstations. Video communications have proven necessary for inclusivity and productivity during the pandemic, but a surge of users using video can completely bog down your network, causing lags and connectivity issues which can be frustrating and ultimately lead to decreased productivity. A simple fix for these issues is adopting a robust and higher bandwidth network connectivity, by way of an SD WAN.

BOOST BANDWIDTH WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK:

Adding bandwidth to your network can be expensive. SD-WAN is an attractive option for increased bandwidth pressure because it’s a solution that can meet your demands while remaining cost-effective.

OPTIMIZE CENTRALLY OPTIMIZED NETWORKS:

Once you check the boxes for enterprise video quality and bandwidth, the next step is to ensure that IT teams have the resources needed to effectively operate networks from cloud-to-cloud. SD-WAN is a useful IT tool for network management because it provides full visibility into what’s happening across the network.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU NEED MORE ENTERPRISE BANDWIDTH

Simple. It’s time to optimize your network, and Kollective’s browser-based peering is the easiest and most efficient solution to solve your enterprise bandwidth needs. The browser-based peering solution scales video communication across your network, allowing you to achieve 100% delivery at 1% the bandwidth. Kollective’s superior user experience, seamless integration, global scalability, decision-based analytics and effortless onboarding. Kollective optimizes the network you have today, we use peering to distribute content efficiently.

Kollective Browsed-Based Peering offers:

  • Lower transit costs
  • Retain greater control of routing paths
  • Improve overall network performance
  • Increase redundancy by using multiple locations
  • Increase bandwidth capacity

Talk to an expert today to find out how Kollective can help you optimize your network in 2021.

The post 2021 Digital Transformation Trend: SD-WAN Optimization for Live Video appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Kollective IQ Makes Microsoft 365 Live Events Smarter

CMMA Blog

In today’s world of highly distributed workforces, live events are essential to maintaining enterprise communications -they give you an opportunity to deliver important messages at scale, create an inclusive environment and make collaboration more accessible than ever before.

After your company hosts a live event, how do you know if your video reached the right people – and what the quality of experience was for the viewer? Only an advanced analytics platform like Kollective IQ can tell you that.

WHY ANALYTICS MATTER

In-depth analytics like reach score, average view duration, quality of experience (QoE score), peering efficiency and bandwidth savings help you gain insight into user trends and satisfaction, leading to a better live event experience for your organization. Customizable analytics dashboards give you the insights you need to improve your understanding of live event performance and take your analytics to the next level.

THE KOLLECTIVE IQ DIFFERENCE

Not all enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) platforms are created equal, especially when it comes to analytics. Do you know who watched your last Microsoft 365 Live Video event? What the quality of experience was? Where they were located? When they accessed the content? With Kollective IQ, you do.

It’s more important than ever to know your virtual events are reaching every member of the workforce, but if you’re relying on standard reporting dashboards, you may not be getting the full picture. Take a look at the analytics capabilities of standard Microsoft 365 Live Events reporting compared to Kollective IQ’s analytics dashboard:

MICROSOFT 365 LIVE EVENT REPORTING:

  • Participants
  • Start Time
  • Event Status
  • Organizer
  • Presenters
  • Producers
  • Recording
  • Production Type

KOLLECTIVE IQ ANALYTICS ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS:

  • Quality of Experience (Event & User)
  • Unique Views by Region
  • Bandwidth & Peering Scores
  • Views by App/Platform/Browser
  • Network Region
  • Bitrate by User
  • Play Duration by User
  • Aggregate Trending
  • Network
  • Performance (Aggregate & Region)
  • Delivery Metrics (Subnet & Region)
  • Custom Metrics & Dashboards

WHAT SETS KOLLECTIVE IQ APART

When you utilize Kollective IQ’s analytics dashboard, you have access to network data and event insights you can act on, like QoE score and regional viewership. Plus, Kollective IQ’s dashboards are customized to your workflow, making it easy to ship data when and where you need it.

Quality of Experience (QoE) Score: A holistic look at the viewer’s experience including time spent displaying video, relative to the total time spent both displaying video and buffering. The QoE score quantifies the quality of a live event and is used to gain deeper knowledge of live event and network performance. If a user has a low QoE score, Kollective IQ can be used to identify that person and send them a video recap of the live event. Having access to your employees’ QoE score allows you to leverage live events insights to improve employee engagement.

Unique Views by Region: A simplified way to monitor the movement of your workforce and gain insight on where/when they consume video. This tool can give you both a high-level view of users by region and a more granular lens on how the individual consumed your Microsoft 365 Live Event. It also allows global enterprises the opportunity to see how messaging is received globally.

Custom Dashboards: Analytics dashboards customized to your work flow. Imagine this, after your company hosts a Microsoft 365 Live Event, your VP of Communications wants you to generate a report to send to the CEO about how many people viewed your event in a specific office or region – no problem. Creating custom metrics, visualizations and dashboards is easy with Kollective IQ. In addition to standard workflows, you can choose which data sets to highlight, so you can save reports to your own personal workspace or share within the organization.

Get Better Insights into Your Microsoft 365 Live Events

Are you using Microsoft 365 Live Events? Would you like better insights into event performance and employee engagement? For a limited time, when you sign up for the 30-day FREE trial of Kollective ECDN, we’ll extend access to your enhanced analytics for another 60 days – that’s 90 days of FREE analytics!

Visit the offer page to learn exactly what’s included.

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