Vividas Newsletter: April 2009

Tough Times lead to substantial growth in live corporate streaming events

As businesses curb air travel expenses during the economic downturn, companies around the globe are switching to video webcasting to conduct business meetings across the miles. Singapore for example, has seen a 20 per cent rise in the number of businesses requiring live video webcasting solutions in the past 12 months. The shift in Singapore reflects global trends. Last month, research firm Gartner predicted that high-definition video meeting solutions would replace 2.1 million airline seats annually by 2012.

To support this a recent poll of almost 200 corporate travel managers from 17 countries including the UK and US found that half of the respondents said their companies were planning to invest in alternatives to air travel. 54% said they will be required by their bosses to track cost avoidance savings used to justify an investment in technological substitutes to flying to meetings. Another survey conducted by Allman Communication suggested that just over 60% of the respondents planned to increase spend on company intranets to better improve their communication capabilities.

These findings are consistent with the increase in enquiries our partners are receiving from corporations looking for a broadcast quality live streaming solutions as a means to cut travel costs and increase the frequency and quality of their communication with staff and stakeholders.

For corporations, Vividas delivers a high quality stream to desktops across the Wide Area Network using existing web server infrastructure and with minimal adverse effect on network performance. For companies wanting to implement live streaming capability this means big cost savings and fast implementation.

Vividas releases new enhancements

Vividas is delighted to announce 2 new enhancements to its live streaming solution. VivShow enables Vividas Live streaming to be synchronized to a slide presentation. VivQ offers the ability to control and schedule multiple live encoders from a single remote user interface operating from a Windows desktop.

An example of VivShow can be seen at http://www.vividas.com/VivShow_demo/

Vividas delivers scalable live streaming capability to large corporate network for 80% less cost than conventional solutions

In one recent quote supplied by a leading managed services provider, the cost to set up a network to support scalable live streaming to staff in 20 locations exceeded $1.4M in year 1. Because corporate networks are not normally capable of supporting live streams a new infrastructure must be built "over the top" of the existing network.

Vividas live streams are unique in that they are reliably transmitted over http, this means only one copy of the live stream travels to each office location over the wide area network, and is then delivered to multiple users locally via existing infrastructure.

An added benefit of this difference is reduced time and effort to deploy. Because no new infrastructure needs to be acquired and deployed, the commercial processes normally required to make a major IT investment can be circumvented.

Want to increase the consumption of video at your live event by 34%?

Vividas live streams are instantly cached on standard web servers. Using our live editing software, editors can create playlists of event highlights on the fly from cache and publish these in real time. The playlists reference the existing cache and are played seamlessly in sequence by the player. This means users can review highlights immediately after they happen and when they have the most currency and value.

Using other technologies the live stream cannot be cached. Highlights of live events for on demand consumption are not available until an edit and dedicated encode has been created after the event. In most cases this is some hours or even days after the event when interest and currency of the highlights has dwindled.

At a recent major sporting event where this technology was used, 7 million minutes of video were streamed. Of these, almost 2.4 million minutes were highlights created using the Vividas Live editor. Vividas delivered 34% more brand exposure and 34% more value to the end user than would have been possible with other streaming technologies.

New business

In Singapore, IHG, FTSE and DHL are all new users of Vividas technology. Each of these companies is replacing more expensive means of internal communication with Vividas internet streaming solutions.

US-based Direct Broadcasting Company is using Vividas live technology to deliver a range of live sporting content, including boxing, swimming, diving, wrestling, baseball, basketball, football and ice hockey.

Also on the international front, Spanish company, Iofusion TV is using Vividas to provide Video-on-Demand solutions for local government and business.

Back in Australia, State Government use of Vividas continues to increase. In addition to the Victorian Parliament being streamed live using Vividas technology, the NSW Department of Water & Energy has signed on as a new Vividas customer, providing valuable information on wise water usage.

Following the lead of the Melbourne International Film Festival, the LaMirada Film Festival has chosen Vividas technology to showcase the festival’s movie trailers to its fans.

Vividas welcomes new partners

Vividas continues to cement its presence throughout the Asia Pacific region this month signing a new channel partner agreement with Creatology, a Melbourne based producer, post production facility and multimedia specialist. To find out more visit them at www.creatology.com.au

This month also sees Vividas entering into a strategic partnership with Hong Kong based United Information Technology. UIT is a leading storage solutions provider who have a proven track record of empowering businesses throughout Asia with enterprise class storage products, application software and industry solutions. UIT storage solutions are deployed by many key corporate customers, in sectors spanning telecommunications, media, financial services, energy, government and education. Visit them at www.uitstor.com

Meanwhile Sydney-based partner Works.com.sg, which specialises in internal and external corporate communications solutions (including full event production), continue to spread the Vividas message. We inadvertently provided the incorrect URL for Works in our last issue, so here’s the correct one: www.works.com.sg

And finally

John Molden from Vividas will be presenting at this years AIMIA Digital Government Summit to be held in Canberra at the end of the month. Participants will hear from one of our Melbourne partners by live video link discussing how Vividas technology is being used by the Victorian Parliament to deliver live streaming solutions.