By Nicole Olsen
In this guest blog, George Richards from MediaPlatform partner Hive Streaming helps you gauge whether your network will be ready when video-savvy employees return to the office.
Can your network handle the increase in video usage when your employees start to come back to the office?
As many companies get ready to return to the office soon, they’ll have to deal with new issues: network performance, video deliverability, insight into video analytics, and much more. After all, most employees have been working remotely for more than a year, and many managers have been relying on video for communication during this time. That’s not likely to stop now that some or all employees are returning to the office, as employers may still rely on video for both internal and external communication. This extra strain will be added to all the regular use of your office network. Can your network handle all that traffic? If you’re not sure, here’s what to consider.
Performance & Deliverability
It’s critical that you ensure your network is capable of delivering large-scale video communications for both live and on-demand video. This way, if you have announcements to share with employees at all locations, you can rest assured that everyone in the office can watch without interruption. You don’t want the video stopping to buffer, and you don’t want your high-quality video to drop down to low quality because your network can’t handle the strain.
Keep in mind that you need to be able to reach even the small or remote offices that may have limited bandwidth, so consider the network quality at all office locations, not just the largest ones. If you’re worried about your current network’s ability to handle streaming video, Hive Streaming can help by reducing bandwidth from the video source by up to 99%. This makes it possible to distribute live and on-demand video without
sacrificing quality, ensuring that every viewer in your company can watch your videos smoothly without affecting your network.
Multi-Platform Support
Thankfully, there are a few quality operating systems to choose from when it comes to technology in the office. However, sometimes this variety of platforms can present a challenge, as not every program is meant to work seamlessly with every system.
This is why you should make sure any programs you use are compatible with—and offer plenty of support for—Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and Windows. Hive Streaming is an example of a video distribution solution that offers support for all systems, so you can get quality video streaming in your office no matter which operating system you use (which is especially important if you ever switch to a different system).
Insight into Current and Past Video Performance
Another way to ensure your network is ready for the influx of employees is to strive for increased insight into video performance. Not only do you need to see how past videos have done, but you also need real-time understanding of how live events are performing. You need to know what the viewer experience is like so that you can make any adjustments if needed.
More specifically, you deserve to see detailed statistics about current and past video performance, such as the number of viewers, viewer experience, bitrates, and the effect on the network. Hive Streaming offers a deep understanding of how your live and past videos have done, so you can stay updated on the stats surrounding your videos.
Video Operation
In addition, you need access to tools that can monitor and test network readiness in your office. Such tools should also be able to monitor and test the stream health and video experience to make sure your videos are of high quality before your viewers even see them. You can do this easily through Hive Video Distribution’s silent testing feature, which simulates a live event without involving any end users. This feature is scalable and offers advanced configuration, with all video statistics available both during and after the test.
Analytics
Finally, you can improve your network in the office by keeping track of video analytics. In particular, you’ll want to see actionable insights that will make it possible to improve video quality. This means video reach, adoption, employee engagement, and the overall
quality of the whole experience.
That’s where tools like Hive Insights come into play. With this analytics service, you get access to aggregated event metrics—like viewer participation, viewing time, network impact, streaming performance, and more. You’ll also get ranking lists that show the locations and viewers by size, video quality experience, and other important details. And if you want to look at event statistics by location, viewer experience, or customer site, you can do that within minutes with Hive Insights.
These are the main ways to monitor and improve your network as your employees go back to the office. As you can see, Hive has a solution for each of the common challenges that businesses will likely face when it comes to network strength. Contact us if you’re interested in hearing more about how Hive can help!