Last month, I had an opportunity to speak at a regional meeting of the Communications Media Management Association (CMMA) at the JC Penney Corporate Headquarters in Plano, Texas. The event had a great format, where half a dozen technology companies each had twenty minutes to articulate their vision of where we will be in three years. Kind of like speed dating for techies.
The overall theme of my segment was that the use of video in the enterprise will dramatically increase over the next three years. This will create challenges and opportunities. They were summarized into four segments:
• IT Rises to the Challenge - IT infrastructure investment has been curtailed in recent years. This has led to a considerable amount of aged and capacity-limited infrastructure remaining deployed across many corporations. This creates a real challenge as video proliferation will require upgrading many of these systems. Other video-driven challenges to IT include mobility, security, bring your own device, and a lack of video expertise. Our view is that IT organizations will rise to meet this challenge in the coming years.
• Relevance & The Media Manager – One would think that the growth of enterprise video is a good thing for the Media Manager. It is. However, this will also result in change. The Media Manager will need to adapt to remain relevant in the future. Aside from executing their current responsibilities, media managers will need to focus on three new roles to remain relevant: Subject Matter Expert on video quality and distribution to their IT organization, Mentor on quality techniques to help associates creating their own quality content, and Trusted Source in guiding their organization to reliable third-party content.
• Applications, Applications, & More Apps – The market today does an excellent job in providing solutions for corporate communications. Webcasting and video portal solutions are well evolved and meet the needs of the enterprise. However, the use of video extends far beyond corporate communications. Our view is that in the next three year, the market will witness an explosion of applications in five areas: Corporate Training, Digital Signage, Social Media, Third Party Content, and Industry-specific Mobile Apps.
• The Integrated Enterprise – As video proliferates across the enterprise, it will need to integrate with more and more IT systems. Today, we integrate with LDAP and Learning Management Systems. However, this will expand to include Media Asset Management systems, Video Conferencing Technology, Mobile Enterprise Apps, and countless others. In many ways, this presents the greatest long-term challenge to today’s technology providers.
In the coming weeks, we will post deeper dives into these topics on this web site. In the meantime you can go here to view a video of my presentation. In addition, you can go here to view the Prezi of our CMMA presentation.
Feel free to comment. We are anxious to hear your perspective.
Ed Behan, Vice President of Enterprise Services at Globecomm
