Happy
Multicast Monday! In my last post, I talked about building
a foundation for business video success
with an eCDN. To recap, video
uses a massive amount of bandwidth, and if you haven’t prepared your network with
an enterprise content delivery network (eCDN), you’re in for an epic fail.
So today,
I thought I’d go into the questions you need to ask when choosing the right
eCDN for your organization.
What impact will it have on my network?
Save
yourself the headache. Choose an eCDN that is CMS-platform source agnostic and
works with the technology investments you’ve already made. Look for an
HLS-compatible solution that overlays your existing network infrastructure and
doesn’t require proprietary media servers and/or video players.
Is it reliable?
I’ve said
it before, and I’ll say it again: If your viewers experience buffering, latency
or jitter, they won’t bother to watch it. All that work for nothing. Make sure
your eCDN is resilient and can handle packet loss. Chose one with bandwidth-smoothing
technologies
, real-time monitoring and built-in failover. In
addition, think through how you will test your network in advance of live
events.
Is it
secure?
Security
is a priority. Period. Which means you need to find an eCDN that keeps your
videos “in the family.” Some solutions like peer-to-peer (P2P) use whatever
resources are available on your network, including personal devices connected
to external servers, to distribute video—which puts your network at risk. Also,
find a solution that provides a layer of encryption, an in-memory key and PKI
certifications to prevent unauthorized transmissions of your video streams.
Does it support my current—and future—video
environment?
In case
you missed it, Adobe announced it will end-of-life Flash, making HTML5 video
the new industry standard. Make sure your eCDN supports not only HTLM5 video,
but every video platform you use today. Moving to a standards-based delivery
method gives you the flexibility you need to protect your investment.
Can it scale?
Your
enterprise content delivery system needs to do more than run efficiently. It also
needs to scale and evolve with your organization. It doesn’t matter if your
webcast is flawless if only 10 people sitting in a conference room can watch it.
The number of people who watch your business videos matters (I bet internal
comms asks you, “How many viewers?”), so make sure your eCDN covers every
single employee regardless of their location.
How will I prove ROI?
Speaking
of numbers, confirm you can derive the right kind of analytics. You’ll want to
access both real-time and archived analytics to understand every element of
your video streams. You should be able to easily access actional data, such as
viewer location/device and overall network performance.
Are you
ready to learn more how an eCDN can save your network and improve viewer
experience, drop
us a message
. Ramp is 100 percent focused on helping you resolve
network congestion created by video behind the firewall.
The post Multicast Monday:
6 Questions to Ask When Choosing an eCDN
appeared first on Ramp
.