Thanks to the original video sites like Netflix and Youtube, the hundreds of streaming services that popped up in their wake, and the push into live video by companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, video is now everywhere.

In fact, global video traffic is expected to take up 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021 , a 3x increase from 2016. Of that, live internet video will account for 13% of Internet video traffic by 2021, a 15x increase over 2016.

The office is no exception to this increase in video usage. Corporate events, CEO announcements, ongoing training, and any information or content that was previously handled in-person at large meetings, on conference calls, in a classroom or over email is now being viewed over video.

When it comes to the enterprise, video is no longer something that’s nice to have or a flashy toy; it’s now a business requirement. And with Microsoft’s recent announcement of new live event capabilities in Microsoft Stream, enterprises will be able to easily produce large-scale live and on-demand events in Microsoft Stream, Microsoft Teams or Yammer for employees across the organization, no matter where they are in the world.

These new capabilities will allow enterprises to create and control massive libraries of video content, while features like facial detection, speech-to-text, closed captions and transcript search promise to make video as critical of a collaborative business tool as email, conference calls, or the cloud.

Check out all the new capabilities for creating and broadcasting live events with Microsoft Stream in Microsoft’s recent product announcement video:

These new capabilities reflect an understanding on Microsoft’s part that video has become the primary way major communications are delivered within a company, especially as enterprises become more far-flung around the globe as they shift towards remote and mobile workforces.

However, before enterprises can take advantage of these new capabilities, they’ll need to make sure their network is up to the task of handling all the additional video their people will be watching.

Delivery optimization to the edge of the network is vitally important for both the quality of the video viewing experience and the performance impact on other business-critical applications using the network. If global video traffic is going to increase threefold in the next three years, enterprises should expect a similar increase on their own networks–an increase some enterprises may find difficult to accommodate.

With its new Microsoft Stream integration , enterprises will be able to easily connect to Kollective’s ECDN solution from within Stream to optimize network bandwidth for live events and on-demand video, providing the best possible viewing experience for users while minimizing the impact on enterprise networks.

Now is the time to make video a priority. Check out our whitepaper to learn about some of the challenges enterprises face when scaling video, along with real-world solutions for how to overcome them.