How Government agencies are leveraging video to enhance communications.
More employee and customer engagement with Live Streaming and Video on Demand.
The Past: Videos Transformation from Hardware to Software
Video communication and video conferencing have been around for decades. In the past, video, communications were seen as a “nice to have” but not a required form of communication. It also was, for most companies, cost prohibitive, difficult to use, and hard to set up. This was especially true in Government agencies as they relied on ISDN—they were not comfortable using the Internet Protocol (IP) as they felt it was not secure. Companies like Cisco/Tandburg, Polycom, and Lifesize were the leaders in the space in the 1990s and 2000s. They provided hardware-based systems which included a codec, pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera, and conference phone. The challenge faced then was interoperability and the users frustration of whether they could communicate with each other.
In the 2000s we saw the emergence of the Unified Communications platforms. Products like Skype, Teams, Webex, and Zoom all changed how organizations and people communicated. While it was a great idea, there were still challenges with quality, bandwidth, and in general, people being comfortable on a webcam in front of others.
The Present: More than a Unified Communications System
Over the last two years, video has become a primary form of communication Today, with a majority of the workforce working from home, it’s essential for teams and organizations to stay in touch. Unified Communications platforms are great for team meetings, ad-hoc meetings, or 1:1 communication. But they fell short when there was a need for content to be repeatable, secure, and scalable. They also need the ability to either stream live or have the video assets available to be viewed at a later time, (video on demand.)
For companies trying to overcome what Unified Communications could not deliver, Qumu was the answer. Some of the biggest names in government contracting leverage Qumu to reliably deliver both live stream and video on demand to hundreds of thousands of users. With the Qumu Video Engagement Platform, Government and other organizations are able to easily produce, edit and publish events, videos, and webcasts in a single interface. Embedding widgets that they can use from Qumu to embed videos into portals, webpages, and much more. They can quickly organize video assets for users to search content, channels and find the material they need to be successful. They can gain control by seamlessly managing users, guest access, and security settings. This makes it easy for organizations to improve communications given their workforce is most likely hyper distributed and with some returning to the office.
The Future: Secure, Scalable Video Content for All
The use cases are endless when Unified Communications can be ingested into the Qumu platform to not only reach a broader audience but to be accessed after the event. Some customers leverage Qumu’s platform for daily morning briefings. Others use it for product launches both internally and externally to their organization. In fact, product launches, town halls and executive communications can reach a much wider audiences than traditional in person events. Product development, onboarding, all-hands, and team meetings are also widely used examples of how to leverage video. The content is automatically organized for users to easily search content, channels and to find the assets they need to be successful. Qumu can also provide access secure access outside the organization to reach the organization’s customers as well.
There are many ways to reach internal and external customers by leveraging the Qumu Video Engagement Platform. Creators of events, meetings, and video assets cannot afford to use just VOD, streaming and Unified Communications. They need to take a holistic approach, depending on the need for content distribution and formation delivery.
Brian Posey is Account Manager at Qumu
