Martin Nurser, Vice President and General Manager of Qumu EMEA

The rise of remote working, the globalisation of operations, the widespread adoption of social business and the desire for a more personalised contact across geographic and cultural boundaries have created the need for corporate communications to be more effective than ever. Enterprise video has become a powerful tool to achieve this and it is particularly attractive to the next-generation financial institutions because of its transparency, security and wide reach.

Video has many business uses which range from customer service videos to leadership announcements and company all-hands meetings, from recruitment and development to compliance and regulatory training, from collaboration to knowledge sharing among multiple and diverse business lines.

Using Cloud services for managing and delivering video internally and externally can speed up deployment and simplify operations for the applications that use video, without compromising content security and preserving investment in on-premises infrastructure. Consequently, understanding the operational, technical and economic considerations for the use of Cloud-based video communications is now a priority for executives looking to drive employee engagement, increase agility, reduce infrastructure and operational management costs and improve service automation.

When introducing Cloud video solutions, security issues inevitably arise. Every type of video broadcast has its own security requirements and security is multi-faceted for both intranet and internet connections. The primary goal of any Cloud deployment is to protect the internet connections, the company’s network and to maintain data integrity and maximum content security. You will therefore want a scalable, robust and secure Cloud offering and to have everything from password-protected content to SSL-secure communication, single sign-on capabilities and usage audit trails. You will need to have multiple lines of defence in place.

Different Clouds for Different Business Needs

If your video content is for marketing purposes and your business goal is to provide on-demand video to your audiences, your security requirements are limited and the Public Cloud may be a good choice.  Moreover, if your content is for an internal audience, there are a lot of very good options to protect it even in a Public Cloud hosted environment.  Users are safely enabled to upload, transcode, share their own videos and find relevant content, access rights based on user groups can be assigned and the reach of your video programs extended to mobile device users.

If however your business goal is to deliver live streaming to internal audiences, there are limitations to be aware of which are related to concentrations of viewers on private networks. When a live event begins, all stream requests traverse the company firewall and hit the video service in the Cloud. The challenge is that the return video traffic, unless managed, will go through the network firewall with a separate stream for every viewer, adversely affecting the inbound internet connection or even the entire intranet.  A Private Cloud would be ideal in these circumstances as it is a cloud-computing platform housed within the corporate firewall and controlled by the company’s IT department.

The primary goal of a Hybrid Cloud solution is to protect the internet connections and the company’s intranet from overload when a large number of users are tuned in. A Hybrid Cloud uses the key attributes of public and private clouds and often provides the best solution. Hybrid Cloud deployments are defined as leveraging edge devices on the corporate network for stream splitting and caching to minimize impact to the corporate network.

A video platform available as a Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Managed Service or On-Premise solution will offer organisations a choice of deployment models for each stage of video adoption so that users are never “locked-in” to any one deployment method.

Final Considerations

The Cloud is creating new possibilities for innovative business communications and video communications have become an area of investment for organisations that are serious about increasing customer and employee engagement.  It is therefore important for executives to switch on the technical strategy driving this exciting new channel.

We live in a digital world and all companies have had to turn into media companies. Video in the Cloud is an easily adaptable business platform offering an immediate, low-risk and flexible solution to the complexity of rich and confidential content creation and distribution. It provides your employees and clients with a dynamic, natural and very contemporary collaborative medium.

Even in a highly regulated environment, with the right platform in place, you can choose the Cloud solution that best fits your business needs and that will grow and evolve alongside your company.

Martin Nurser, Vice President and General Manager of Qumu EMEA, brings more than 25 years of enterprise and technology industry experience with emphasis on engineered systems and cloud technologies. He is a leading expert in channel and strategic alliance development and management, go-to-market planning, as well as market segmentation and business strategy formulation. His most recent corporate position was Director of Alliances and Commercial Development at CSC, a leading global provider of consulting and outsourcing solutions. Martin was instrumental in the development of a strategic alliance between CSC and Oracle. During his tenure, the CSC Oracle practice realised unprecedented business growth across EMEA. Prior to that, he has worked and consulted within the IT, Retail and Food & Drink industries. Martin has held a variety of board level leadership roles, including Sales and Marketing, Product Development, Business Development, and Operations.