The choices available today in the enterprise video streaming world are abundant. While not all video streaming platforms can scale and work well in an enterprise environment, the enterprise world has a lot to learn from the video platform world at large. For instance, several of the enterprise players are striving to become the YouTube of the enterprise world. The market here is thronged with both commercial and open source players. Given all these choices, it is often a confusing decision for the buyer on which one to go with and here are some questions they should find answers to, in this pursuit:
Goal: Why do you need an enterprise video streaming platform? Is it a productivity tool to share product information, amongst teams? Is it a learning tool? Is it a communication tool? Often times, it may serve more than one purpose, but identifying this upfront and the tool’s flexibility to scale to newer uses down the line, will help bring in a more concerted effort in making the right choice.
Integration with existing systems: An enterprise setup is a complex setup. It is full of systems that support both internal functions, as well as the product or service under development. When any new system is deployed at an enterprise level, integration and cross compatibility / functioning with existing systems is an important point to consider. Integration with all systems may often not be feasible, but this needs to be evaluated at least with the core systems in place.
Scalability: Enterprise users can scale quickly, especially as the platform use stabilizes. Scalability can be both in terms of user numbers as well as feature set functionality. Considering such scalability parameters will help iron out long term usage issues upfront.
Usability: While most enterprise users are often digital savvy, some of them could be admin, training, HR personnel too who deal with content. In such cases, a simple and intuitive user interface will make platform adoption much smoother and more successful
Ease of Customization: Platform customization is almost always a requirement in enterprise adoption. This can be feature customization or UI customization. Ease of such customizations will thus help choose one solution over another, much faster.
Security: Secure content, especially often related to the product under development is shared within teams on such enterprise video platforms. Management talks, internal to the organization may be streamed and available enterprise wide. These are all very confidential content that need to be managed securely, amongst the hundreds and thousands of enterprise users. Security of the platform is thus an important feature to consider in the choice under consideration
The above set of parameters is certainly not exhaustive but a very important set to consider amongst others that may specifically apply to your case. These points will however, make your decision process simpler, eliminate a few options and get you closer to making an educated decision.