In Enterprise Video, Cost is Still King

After the mad rush to get on the video bandwagon, it seems that enterprise IT executives are waking up to the cost of moving all those bits.

Steve Vonder Haar over at Streaming Media magazine explains the problem: Eyes on the Enterprise: Mo’ Videos, Mo’ Money—Solving the Problem of Network Cost.

What most of the IT execs surveyed miss is the solution. They’re putting their faith in network expansion, wider use of CDNs and P2P apps.

To quote Steve: “Against this backdrop, it can be maddening to try to understand what some IT executives are thinking when considering the deployment of networking solutions to address multimedia distribution issues within their organization. The bulk of respondents in the IMS survey (68%) said they would prefer to address the need for expanded multimedia distribution by increasing the capacity of their existing corporate networks. Essentially, in a multimedia networking market where costs are king, IT executives are saying they prefer the most expensive, Cadillac-style solution to their troubles.”

Maddening, indeed, when they could reduce their costs immediately with better video compression while not requiring any additional network capacity.

For example, an enterprise or UGC site using Adobe Flash Player video encoded in H.263 could shrink their bandwidth use by at least 25% (in some cases up to 40%) by switching to On2 VP6 or H.264 video in Flash.