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Why you need an Enterprise CDN for Video Streaming

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Riccardo Reale
Why you need an Enterprise CDN for Video Streaming

The vast majority of sites that distribute video today leverage Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to improve the speed and quality of the content experiences they deliver. CDNs are not only for those distributing video over the internet. Enterprises also need a CDN video streaming service if they wish to scale the delivery of video to employees.

Simply put, the video streaming service of an internet CDN improves the quality of the end user’s viewing experience.

The CDN moves large video files from the streaming origin to edge servers in locations physically closer to the viewer. The number of viewers and their physical locations determine how broadly the content is cached.

By serving the content from a local POP (point of presence), congestion on the internet is reduced and the quality of experience, measured by; reduced buffering, shorter startup time, and video resolution – can then be improved.

CDN streaming services ultimately help to boost the quality of the end user’s viewing experience.

Commercial CDNs do a great job at delivering content over the internet. But they can’t help in relieving traffic congestion over the WAN connections within enterprises networks.

CDN video streaming solutions can alleviate the strain on a corporation’s bandwidth.

Bandwidth requirements within enterprises continue to grow as migration to the cloud accelerates along with the adoption of applications such as VoIP, video conferencing, and streaming media.

Deploying SD-WAN technologies can help, as can provisioning additional very expensive WAN bandwidth. But provisioning bandwidth for the peaks caused by high-quality live streaming is usually uneconomic.

So how does an Enterprise CDN for video streaming work? And how can you use CDN streaming services to help you reduce costs and improve the performance of your corporate intranet?

hive enterprise cdn video streaming

Options for Enterprise CDN Video Streaming

There are two basic options for deploying an Enterprise CDN. The challenge can be solved via hardware or software.

There are two basic options for deploying an Enterprise CDN. The challenge can be solved via hardware or software.

Both options take the video stream into each corporate LAN and then distribute it from there to every user requesting it.

Companies like Riverbed and Cisco achieve this via hardware appliances placed in the LAN access point(s). For both Video on Demand (VOD) and Live Streaming. These solutions continuously cache the content on the hardware boxes and directly serve it from there to all other viewers over the LAN.

The issue with the hardware approach, however – is that it still requires careful planning and provisioning. It also means high startup and maintenance costs depending on the number of network locations and employee distribution.

Hive Streaming, on the other hand – solves the challenge via software.

Hive software-only solution leverages the viewers themselves to cache the watched VOD and Live streams content. And serve it directly to other viewers within the same LAN via smart, self-organizing, and secure peering.

Thanks to its self-organizing video optimization algorithms – Hive Streaming doesn’t require specific network planning or provisioning. And the solution automatically scales with the number of employees.

Best CDN for Video Streaming

There’s no doubt that video traffic within corporate enterprises is climbing steadily. And enterprise CDN video streaming can help corporations handle the increase in volume.

Social media, WhatsApp, Facetime, etc, increased everyone’s comfort level with using video. And in these times of remote working – there is a great expectation for transparency from management

Unified Communications applications are embracing video, making it easier for anyone within the enterprise to broadcast a presentation to fellow employees.

Also, companies are looking for efficiencies and don’t want the expense and inconvenience of gathering everyone in central locations.

If video is impacting traffic on your network. Hive Streaming would love to help you solve the problem with our centrally managed, software-only solution.

We like to think that we offer the best CDN for video streaming within the enterprise.

enterprise cdn video streaming using hive

There are also many other factors that you should consider in deploying an enterprise CDN. Security concerns, enterprise CDN pricing, future standard compatibility, ability to integrate with webcasting and video management platforms to give some examples.

Enterprise P2P Streaming.

Lastly, we’d be happy to discuss these considerations with you in detail. Make sure to reach out to us!

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