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Content Distribution for the Enterprise: Ignite Powers the
Corporate Channel
Sponsored by: Ignite Technologies
F.508.935.4015
Melissa Webster
May 2007
P.508.872.8200
INTRODUCTION: CONTENT DISTRIBUTION
CHALLENGES IN THE ENTERPRISE
If your organization is forward-thinking, you already recognize the strategic
importance of effective communication to internal, as well as external, constituencies.
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
Informing, alerting, messaging, and training are all critical to building a skilled, ready,
and competitive organization that's prepared to proactively pursue new opportunities
and react quickly to changing business conditions.
You've already invested in creating and producing content to communicate with
these constituencies — including executive messaging to employees, sales collateral
in support of a new product launch, elearning programs to train customer
support personnel, compliance-mandated certification programs, and all kinds of
communications to customers, partners, suppliers, and investors. And you are
probably increasingly investing in video and other types of rich media to give your
communications more impact and make them more compelling to ensure that your
viewers absorb and retain the information.
IDC believes that the end-to-end process of corporate communications — from
content creation through delivery — is a key core competency for today's forward-
thinking organization. The content that you're investing in creating is an integral part
of the business process it supports — whether it's launching a new product, creating
a new service, ensuring compliance with industry- or government-mandated
regulations, or providing customer care. The targeted, secure, and reliable delivery of
that content is a critical part of the process.
And yet, if your company is like so many we've spoken with, content delivery is
probably a challenge for you. IDC research shows that most organizations are
struggling with content delivery for a variety of reasons that we examine in this paper.
We believe an enterprise content delivery platform can give organizations the solution
they need for scalable, reliable, and secure business communications.
2. Global, Geographically Distributed Workforce
One of the biggest challenges that enterprises face today is the need to communicate
with — and equip — a large, diverse, and global workforce. Increasingly, that global
workforce is spread across multiple geographies and time zones. It includes internal
employees, consultants, and contractors and, increasingly, external participants such
as suppliers, channel partners, and customers. It also includes workers whose PCs
are directly connected to the corporate network, telecommuters working from home,
mobile users who connect to the network from customer sites or while traveling, and
remote external users.
Limitations of Email for Reaching Geographically Distributed Users
Most organizations have invested heavily over the past several years to ensure that
they can provide secure email services to this diverse, geographically distributed
workforce. That's why email is often the default solution for content distribution: It's
ubiquitous, everyone is already trained to use it, and it can transport content in the
form of attachments through firewalls to reach external users and those connecting
over the Internet from outside the corporate network.
But most companies that have tried to use email as a vehicle for content delivery are all
too familiar with its limitations. Email was never designed as a transport mechanism for
the kinds of content we are producing today — especially rich media such as video,
where files can easily run to tens or even hundreds of megabytes in size. Using email to
deliver a large file companywide puts a huge strain on the email server and eats up
storage. Large email attachments are also a big problem for users on slower networks
or users who connect over dial-up lines: They have a long wait while those emails
download, and it interrupts their work. And because many firewalls impose size
limitations on attachments, those emails aren't even delivered. For companies that want
to leverage video and other rich media, that's an insurmountable barrier.
As for the email communications that are delivered, there's a good chance they'll never
be read. Even emails marked quot;urgentquot; are often overlooked among the avalanche of
emails that clutter users' inboxes. As IDC research shows, knowledge workers spend
an average of 14.5 hours each week reading and responding to emails. And they spend
another 15.3 hours each week searching for information and filing and organizing
content. They waste a lot of that time looking for information they can't find because
they can't remember where it is, they can't find the specific email that contained it, or
they don't know which file or email contains the current version of that information. One
alternative is to use email to send a URL and ask users to retrieve the content
themselves — at least that way, the company has a mechanism to ensure that
everyone can find the current version — but this approach typically results in even lower
reach (the percentage of the target audience that actually engages with the content).
Finally, email doesn't offer corporate communications staff and executives an
effective communications management tool. Instead, they are left with distribution
lists as a way to target specific content to specific groups of users. It's cumbersome to
use email options to track delivery of the content; there's no way to know whether the
recipient actually watched the content, when it's a video; and there are no tracking or
reporting capabilities.
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3. The Rise of Rich Media in the Enterprise
Organizations today need to distribute content in a plethora of formats: documents,
video, audio, podcasts, and all kinds of multimedia presentations. What's driving this
veritable explosion of rich media content?
Typically, the initial use case is executive communications: Management, including
top executives and business unit leaders, wants to put its messages directly to
employees, and there's no better way than a direct, filmed address. Sometimes the
messages are captured in video shot on location — candid interviews or quot;fireside
chatsquot; with company executives, videos of company meetings, and recorded
videoconferences. External sources of video include recordings of executive
interviews on business TV channels, the company's TV ad spots, and all sorts of
other content.
After the executive communications use case is rolled out, companies then focus on
training. IDC expects to see increasing investment over the next few years in video
and multimedia for training purposes — for marketing communications, sales force
training, customer service training, and compliance-mandated certification.
The need to communicate with users across the globe using rich media — especially
video — will only grow. Enterprises need a way to communicate with employees and
other constituents that has greater impact and immediacy, and video is the perfect
medium. And consider the longer-term implications of the demographic shift already
under way today, as younger workers who grew up with the Internet enter the
workforce: the Millennials, as they are called. By 2017, they will account for more than
40% of the workforce. This generation will have a profound impact on the
technologies that are used in the enterprise: They will accelerate the adoption of Web
2.0 technologies in the enterprise, including video.
Network Bandwidth and Capacity Constraints
Generally, the companies we've spoken with see great value in making video content
available to employees. But of all the rich media content types, video is the most
challenging to deliver, and securing adequate network bandwidth and capacity is a
huge concern. With finite network resources, the IT department worries about
allocating enough quot;headroomquot; on the network to meet its quality-of-service
commitments for ERP, CRM, sales order processing, and other mission-critical
transaction processing systems. And corporate communications teams worry about
having enough bandwidth to ensure the quality of the user experience for the videos
they've paid to produce.
Only a fraction of today's enterprise networks are multicast-enabled. Upgrading the
network to increase bandwidth can be an expensive proposition. And network
upgrades may not address the needs of workers in remote locations who have to rely
on dial-up connections or cope with limited connectivity. And then there's the
challenge of serving users who are quot;on the road,quot; connecting from home, or
connecting from customer sites.
©2007 IDC #206433 3
4. Streaming and Network Bandwidth
Many of the organizations we've spoken with over the past year have explored the
use of live or on-demand streaming video for executive and/or corporate
communications. Our research into the state of video in the enterprise has yielded
several key findings.
First, network capacity is a major concern. Organizations with high-speed networks
and plenty of bandwidth believe they still need to be somewhat cautious when it
comes to providing live and/or on-demand streamed video to large numbers of users.
Most organizations make trade-offs in terms of video quality to minimize the impact
on their networks. (The typical bit rate for streamed video for companies we spoke
with was about 400kbps. Very few used higher bit-rate video, even though they would
like to. The few that did had undertaken expensive network upgrades.)
Second, even organizations with high-bandwidth networks have locations with slower-
speed connections. For example, operations in developing countries often lack
broadband connections entirely, and in some cases, dial-up connections aren't 100%
reliable or may be available only for a few hours each day.
Third, although live streamed video typically enjoys very high viewership rates, it isn't
effective for global communications (due to time zone differences). Most companies
that are streaming live videos also need to record their live events for later playback
on demand. On-demand viewership rates are often much lower, however, because
users must usually request the content from a portal. And if playout is interrupted by
rebuffering, abandonment rates climb.
THE NEED FOR AN ENTERPRISE CONTENT
DISTRIBUTION SOLUTION
The result of all of these challenges and constraints is that most enterprises today
rely on a variety of different point solutions for the distribution of content — none of
which adequately support secure, targeted, and reliable delivery, and none of which
give the enterprise the tools it needs to track and analyze content usage for business
process improvement. Enterprises today are using a mix of email, portals, streaming
servers, content management or other repositories, IT systems for desktop
management, and even offline systems for content distribution. These siloed solutions
make it impossible to manage, monitor, and track content usage in a uniform way or
to ensure consistency, currency, or compliance.
Given these challenges — especially in view of the need to make content delivery a
core competency — enterprises clearly need a platform for business communications.
Such a platform needs to proactively deliver content to users in a way that guarantees
reach and in a way that allows organizations to measure (and thus improve) content
utilization.
4 #206433 ©2007 IDC
5. Key Capabilities of an Enterprise Content
Delivery Platform
What must an enterprise business communication platform provide? IDC believes
that an enterprise content delivery platform needs to provide the following capabilities:
! Ability to push content of any kind. First and foremost, an enterprise content
delivery platform must be able to deliver any kind of digital asset, including
business documents; rich media, including video, audio, and multimedia; and
software, including applications, patches, and virus updates. An enterprise solution
must be able to publish everything to the user's desktop that the user needs to do
his or her job effectively. An enterprise content delivery network (CDN) should
ensure that the complete environment of the user — including content and
applications — is managed and is current. (This is especially important because
many interdependencies exist between content and applications/software today.)
! Reliable delivery over all types of connection. An enterprise network is,
in reality, a patchwork of many different networks, which have different
bandwidth, reliability, and load profiles. An enterprise content delivery solution
needs to be able to serve the needs of users who connect over the quot;weakest linkquot;
— typically, users in remote locations where network speeds are lower and
connections may not be reliable.
! Scalability. An enterprise content delivery platform needs to be able to support
all of a company's internal and external users — potentially, thousands or tens of
thousands of users.
! Tracking and analysis. An enterprise solution must be able to monitor and
report on usage, including user interaction with content. A content delivery
platform needs to be able to track whether content was received and whether it
was opened, accessed, and viewed. That's critical for knowing, for example,
whether users actually watched training videos and whether employees received
and listened to executive communications. It's essential for ensuring key
messages were heard. And it's indispensable for closing the loop in elearning
systems, where certification is mandatory.
! Integration with other key systems. To make content delivery a reliable
component of other mission-critical business processes, an enterprise content
delivery solution must be easy to integrate with an enterprise's other IT systems,
including its standard authentication and authorization systems (such as LDAP
and Active Directory), portals, and learning management systems.
! Content management. An enterprise solution needs to help solve the age-old
version management problem by ensuring that users always have the most
up-to-date version of the content at their fingertips. This means that an enterprise
content delivery platform must be able to stage content in advance with an
quot;effective date,quot; replace out-of-date content with new versions, and revoke
content when it is stale or about to expire. Content protection is an increasingly
important consideration in most companies today: It's a dimension of sharing
intellectual property with suppliers and partners. An enterprise content delivery
©2007 IDC #206433 5
6. platform should be able to encrypt content, revoke access to content, and
manage versions from a central, Web-accessible location. Even better is if it can
manage rights to that content at a more granular level by interfacing with other
content protection technologies, including digital rights management systems.
! Ease of use. An enterprise platform should be very easy to use — ideally, it
should require minimal user training. And it should provide quot;politequot; content
delivery — that is, it should work in the background without disrupting the user's
work.
IGNITE TECHNOLOGIES: CONTENT
DISTRIBUTION FOR THE ENTERPRISE
Privately held Ignite Technologies (www.ignitetech.com) is headquartered in Frisco,
Texas (close to Dallas), and has offices in the Virginia/DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston,
and San Francisco areas. The company was founded in 2000. Ignite's executive team
includes many seasoned and successful entrepreneurs, and the company has
received funding from Austin Ventures, WaldenVC, HO2, and SAP. Ignite's customers
include many Fortune 500 companies as well as medium-sized businesses.
Ignite's Content Delivery Solution
Ignite gives its customers a secure, private broadcast network they can use to
publish, manage, and deliver all kinds of digital content to users or groups of users
over any network topology. Ignite's customers leverage this private broadcast network
to deliver full-screen DVD-quality video and other high-impact multimedia
presentations, sales collateral, training materials, and even desktop software
applications. Because Ignite's Content Delivery Solution integrates with an
enterprise's authentication and access systems (LDAP and Active Directory), portals,
and learning management systems, it becomes a key enabler of any content-critical
business process.
Ignite's Content Delivery Solution is a client/server offering and consists of two
components (see Figure 1):
! Ignite Delivery Manager. Ignite Delivery Manager is a hosted solution and
provides Web-based content management/staging, content publishing,
analytics/reporting, and administration facilities.
! Ignite Delivery Center. A small-footprint application called Ignite Delivery Center
is installed on each PC that joins the Ignite content delivery network. Delivery
Center communicates with Delivery Manager to find out what content deliveries
are available for a particular user and ensures the secure delivery of that content.
Delivery Center requires no user training: It simply alerts users that new content
has been delivered to their PCs and gives them an easy-to-use interface to view
the content — no special players are required. It can be deployed in a variety of
ways: as an independent viewer, as an integrated part of another application, or
as a silent quot;headlessquot; background application.
6 #206433 ©2007 IDC
7. Behind the scenes, Ignite Delivery Center is an intelligent client that dynamically
determines the optimal path by which to obtain content and provision it to the
user — according to how the user is connected at the time. Client-side
intelligence is a key architectural differentiator for Ignite: It enables the client to
obtain content via the lowest-cost route by leveraging caches at multiple levels,
even as network conditions and the user's connection change dynamically.
FIGURE 1
Ignite's Content Delivery Solution
Source: Ignite Technologies, 2007
Peer-to-Peer Architecture: Significant Performance Advantages
One of Ignite's great strengths lies in its peer-to-peer content distribution technology.
With peer-to-peer content distribution, often referred to as quot;neighborcasting,quot; a user's
PC can pull content, or pieces of content, from other PCs in its neighborhood —
essentially turning all of the PCs in the user's local area network (LAN) into a quot;gridquot;
that provides another level of caching (and one that is as close as possible to the
user).
Peer-to-peer architecture provides significant performance benefits for content
delivery. First, it shortens the path — and dramatically reduces the network traffic
required — to obtain the content. Second, it is an inherently scalable architecture:
Network efficiency actually increases as users are added to the system because the
greater the number of users, the greater the likelihood that a user's neighbor can
furnish a copy of the content. Third, it enhances reliability because it reduces the
chance that an outage elsewhere in the network could make the content unavailable.
Finally, it helps address the needs of users in remote locations who have slow or
unreliable connections to the corporate network because they can acquire content
from neighbors over their subnets at LAN speed.
©2007 IDC #206433 7
8. Benefits of Ignite's Content Delivery Solution
In summary, Ignite's Content Delivery Solution addresses the challenges we
discussed earlier, including the secure, reliable, and targeted delivery of content to a
dynamic, diverse, and globally distributed audience; content delivery over networks
that may have slow and/or unreliable connections; and delivery of video and other
rich media content that is bandwidth-intensive. Thanks to its peer-to-peer
architecture, Ignite's solution can reduce or eliminate the need for additional network
hardware or expensive network upgrades. And Ignite's solution addresses the needs
of three key groups within the enterprise:
! Line-of-business managers and executives. Because Ignite's solution is
hosted, it is quick to deploy and cost-effective. Ignite not only makes it easy for
managers to publish content to targeted groups of users and refresh or replace
that content when new editions become available; it also gives managers the
tools they need to track and monitor usage of the content — and the feedback
they need to continuously improve their communication strategies. Because
Ignite integrates with portals and learning management systems, it can be
leveraged straightforwardly as a key technology in support of strategic business
processes such as employee certification programs, sales training initiatives, and
dozens of other workforce-readiness applications. Management can leverage the
Ignite quot;corporate channelquot; to communicate breaking news or to alert employees
in case of emergency. And best of all, Ignite enables rich media and video
communications.
! Users. Because content is automatically pushed to users' PCs, users no longer
need to hunt for it: The content is automatically provisioned, wherever they are
and however they are connected. Ignite's quot;politequot; background delivery eliminates
any quot;perceived wait timequot; for users to obtain the content and lets them work
uninterruptedly. And because the content is resident on users' PCs, users are
assured of the best possible experience when it comes to watching videos: They
are spared the common problems associated with streaming media, such as the
long pauses for rebuffering that can destroy the user experience and the impact
of the content.
! IT. Because Ignite's solution is hosted, IT departments can implement it with
minimal effort. And because Ignite's intelligent client dynamically adapts to
changing network conditions, and optimizes delivery for the user's current
connection, Ignite requires very little ongoing oversight from network managers.
At the same time, Ignite provides network managers with all the power they could
wish for when it comes to tuning to ensure that specific application requirements
or quality of service commitments are met. Because Ignite is so bandwidth-
friendly, the overall load on the network and the need for expensive network
upgrades are reduced. And because Ignite eliminates the risk that users will be
unable to obtain the content, it helps reduce IT service desk calls.
8 #206433 ©2007 IDC
9. CASE STUDIES: IGNITE IN ACTION
To learn firsthand how Ignite's customers are benefiting from the Ignite Content
Delivery Solution, we spoke with medium-sized and large organizations from a variety
of industries. Most had large branch office or retail store networks and needed to be
able to reach thousands of employees; none felt their networks were designed to
stream all the rich media content they wanted to deliver to those employees. In
addition to expressing the desire to find a way around network bandwidth constraints,
Ignite's customers also expressed the desire for a generalized platform that would
give them an easy way to manage and publish digital media for and target digital
media to their employees and other key constituencies — essentially making content
delivery a core competency.
All of the customers we spoke with started with a specific application. (Executive and
corporate communications to employees was the initial use case, or one of the initial
use cases, for the majority of the customers we spoke with.) Then, after that first
application was deployed, they began to roll out additional use cases — typically
training (often complementing, or reinforcing, classroom-based training —
increasingly as an integral part of an elearning program) or software delivery. Ignite's
ability to integrate with portals, learning management systems, infrastructure such as
authentication and authorization systems, and other applications emerged as a key
criterion in purchase decisions. Customers we spoke with were enthusiastic about
Ignite's performance, speed of deployment, and support. Case studies for two of the
customers we spoke with are presented in the following sections.
Executive and Corporate Communications at
Huntington Bank
Huntington Bancshares Incorporated is a $36 billion regional bank holding company,
headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, that has grown through multiple acquisitions over
the years. Founded in 1866, Huntington is proud of its ability to provide its customers
the services of a large bank, but with a small-town feel. (Huntington likes to say that
it's quot;a local bank with national resources.quot;) Its executives wanted to reach out to the
entire employee base using video communications, but they faced an expensive
network upgrade and a very long ramp-up. Huntington turned instead to Ignite.
Using Ignite, Huntington created a branded bankwide channel, called Channel 17.
According to Barry Salmons, vice president and emarketing manager at Huntington, it
took just three months from initial installation to full deployment to launch Channel 17,
and Huntington quickly hit its target of 80% reach. Channel 17 gives Huntington's
executives an instant, automated way to get their messages — along with important
news and information — to the thousands of Huntington associates across the bank's
more than 380 branch locations in five states.
Huntington leverages its channel to publish both periodic and ad hoc information to
targeted groups of employees. For example, it delivers a quarterly corporate video
communication called The Huntington Report, which helps to foster company
cohesiveness by featuring a different bank region in each edition — using video that
is shot on location and professionally produced. Huntington publishes a PDF every
Thursday to about 4,000 of its employees containing the information that banking
©2007 IDC #206433 9
10. office personnel need to do their jobs. When Huntington's chief economist or its funds
managers are interviewed on CNBC or Bloomberg, Ignite makes it easy to package a
few short clips and publish. Huntington's TV advertisements are regionalized, and the
bank uses Ignite to push the right ad to the right bank office so that associates see
what their customers see. Ignite also carries content such as one-off sales
promotional materials or short clips from a recent sales contest.
Because Ignite makes publishing so easy, Huntington can focus its energies on
content creation and communication strategy. And because Ignite provides quot;politequot;
background delivery and is so bandwidth-friendly, Huntington can take advantage of
multimedia and DVD-quality video for a more engaging user experience.
Ignite's analytical tools have helped Huntington hone its best practices for making
content compelling. For example, the initial edition of The Huntington Report featured
a 20-minute video. Although viewership was very high, 20 minutes proved to be too
long for half of the audience; Ignite's reports gave Huntington the feedback it needed
to calibrate the content for optimum impact.
What's next for Ignite at Huntington? Salmons recently returned from Ignite's user
conference, Ignite Summit, inspired by the innovative training applications that other
Ignite customers have put in place. He sees great potential for Ignite to play a role in
the delivery of video and multimedia training at Huntington Bank as well, thanks to
Ignite's integration with learning management systems. And as Huntington continues
to grow by acquisition, Ignite could be just the vehicle for extending the welcome mat
to new employees: All they'll need is Ignite's client-side application and an Internet
connection to join Huntington's corporate communications network.
Executive Communications and Remote
Desktop Management at Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings (www.sabre-holdings.com), headquartered in Southlake, Texas, is
a leading travel services company with about $2.8 billion in annual revenue and 9,000
employees. When Sabre found Ignite, the corporate communications department was
looking for a new and better way to distribute executive messages companywide,
while its IT department was looking to improve the way it manages remote desktops.
According to Jody Chavis, service delivery senior for Sabre, the company faced
several challenges related to content distribution. Sabre has a global workforce, with
more than half of its employees working outside the United States. Connection
speeds are significantly slower in some of the regions in which it operates, and
because the company has made several acquisitions, some of its offices are in
different stages of integration. In addition, Sabre has many employees who work
remotely, including salespeople and others who use Web-based email without
connecting to the network on a regular basis.
10 #206433 ©2007 IDC
11. Sabre wanted to get in front of its employees in a way that was unique and — most
importantly — effective. Ignite's Content Delivery Solution let Sabre do just that:
provision high-quality video communications to employees worldwide over a
corporate channel. quot;Whether it's a strategy update from our CEO to the entire
employee population or a departmental message targeting a specific group of 100 to
200 people, Ignite's technology gives us a timely and impactful way to connect with
our employees,quot; said Michael Berman, vice president of corporate communications
for Sabre.
Today, 7,000 Sabre employees and counting from around the world tune in to Dash,
Sabre's Ignite-based private network channel. In addition to providing employees with
video communications from business leaders, training materials, and surveys through
Dash, Ignite also gives Sabre's IT department the tool it needs for remote desktop
management — including software updates, security patches, and computer
inventory checks. quot;We were looking for a better way to manage our assets and to
deploy applications and pertinent patches to desktops without requiring users to
connect to our corporate network,quot; said Chavis. quot;Now, the only thing we need is the
Ignite client running on Windows.quot; Ignite also makes the software distribution process
much more efficient: With Ignite, Sabre has cut the time required to deploy a critical
security patch from hours or days to just minutes.
Thanks to Ignite's analysis and reporting capabilities, Sabre can also track viewership
and usage. For example, Sabre can track content delivery statistics (it's averaging
more than 200GB of content per month) and reach (it's reaching more than 90% of its
target audience — almost everyone that is reachable, since the other 5–10% includes
things such as PCs that have been uninstalled). And it knows that for most of its video
communications, 70–75% of its users actually play the clip. Armed with these
statistics, Sabre can further hone its best practices to maximize the impact of its rich
media communications. For example, Sabre recommends that videos be kept short,
typically three minutes or less; if they are any longer, then you risk losing the viewer's
attention or interrupting the viewer's work. And Sabre carefully scrutinizes the content
that will play over Dash to avoid diluting the impact of the channel.
What does the future hold for Ignite and Sabre? Chavis foresees several additional
use cases that could benefit Sabre. Although the company has no immediate plans, it
has been thinking about how Ignite could enhance compliance training, since Ignite
integrates with learning management systems, as well as the potential to create a
private broadcast network for its tens of thousands of travel agents.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
IDC sees a significant upside for companies that make electronic distribution a
strategic component of their employee communications strategies: They can reduce
their costs to create and distribute information, enhance employee productivity and
skill levels and improve change management, and enhance loyalty and morale. From
our conversations with Ignite customers, it's clear that the logistical problems of
content distribution are straightforwardly addressed with a software CDN.
©2007 IDC #206433 11
12. Because solutions such as Ignite's have minimal impact on infrastructures and IT
departments, companies can get up and running without a long delay and without
significant risk (other than the cost of the service). This makes it easy to start with a
specific use case, realize results from that first use case (typically, with a very short
time to value), and then expand use into additional applications. Of course, customers
must carefully formulate their strategies for content creation and message
development, decide on appropriate formats, and target their programming for their
particular audience(s). Customers new to video and other rich media will want to seek
help from production professionals. Keeping content segments relatively short and
making the content highly relevant are both key to successful programming. Tracking
and analyzing viewer behavior gives companies the insights they need to further
refine. Vendors such as Ignite can provide a wealth of helpful advice around best
practices, including organizational issues.
As a technology start-up, Ignite faces the usual challenges of any small company:
managing growth successfully, maintaining its technology lead, supporting its
customers, and ensuring the quality and reliability of its content delivery service. In
terms of execution, customers we've spoken with are positive about Ignite's ability to
meet those challenges. From a market perspective, we believe the company is well-
positioned to capitalize on the rapid growth of rich media and other digital media
within the enterprise that we foresee. Given the significant merger and acquisition
activity in the CDN space during the past year or so, there is no guarantee that Ignite
will remain an independent company.
ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE
IDC recommends that you ask the following questions as you evaluate your current
content distribution strategy:
! Do you have a mechanism in place to ensure that critical content is received by
users? Can you reach all of your users with that strategy? Does it give you the
control you need — including the ability to target specific content to specific users
or groups of users, to refresh/update that content to ensure that everyone has
the right version, and to protect that content with content security?
! Do you know whether your users read, watch, and absorb the content that you
deliver to them? Does your current strategy give you a way to track and analyze
viewership? Is your current strategy producing measurable results?
! How bandwidth-friendly is your current approach? Will it scale to thousands of
users? Can you reliably deliver content to geographically distributed workers who
may have slower or less reliable network connections?
! How well does your current solution support your future content distribution
needs? Will it support higher-quality, higher bit-rate video? Will it let you expand
the amount of content that you publish? Can you grow your user base?
12 #206433 ©2007 IDC
13. If your current solution falls short in any of these areas, we suggest that you evaluate
software CDNs and assess how an electronic content distribution platform could
improve the way your organization communicates information to its key
constituencies. Talk to vendors and ask to speak with reference customers — both to
gauge the applicability of their solutions to your anticipated needs and to benefit from
firsthand customer experience and advice.
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Copyright 2007 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden.
©2007 IDC #206433 13