That’s how Eric Nowee, Senior Service Delivery Manager, describes the early days of managing internal video delivery at Merck before Hive Streaming entered the picture.
Back then, CEO town halls, a key moment for connecting leadership with thousands of employees, were a logistical minefield.
“We were running everything manually,” he says. “120 virtual streaming servers had to be spun up by our network team for every major event. Testing, patching, updating – it took days. It required extensive resources and attention of IT. And we still had buffering.”
“It was incredibly inefficient,” Eric recalls. “All hands on deck, just to make it work, somehow.”
As internal video became more central to company-wide messaging, the pressure intensified. “We were getting more requests for video streaming, but the backend just wasn’t built for scale,” says Eric. “There had to be a better way.”
That better way turned out to be Hive Streaming.
Merck chose the Hive Video Experience Platform for its network offload efficiency, real-time webcasting insight, and architecture purpose-built for internal communications at scale.
Today, Hive powers every major internal video communications event at Merck, not just CEO town halls, but department updates, virtual all-hands, and more.
“There are no nightmares anymore. No fire drills. Everyone’s relaxed. That says a lot.”
With Hive in place, Eric’s team didn’t just gain visibility, they gained certainty. This goes beyond having access to dashboards alone: what Hive offers is, ultimately, complete confidence in the success of their internal communications events.
Hive’s eCDN ensures reliable video performance across Merck’s global hybrid workforce, including regional offices where local bandwidth restrictions are ubiquitous.
“We know what platforms people are using. We see the connection quality. It just works.”
And the impact isn’t just operational – it’s financial.
“This gives you financial savings, of course. If you don’t need the extra bandwidth you normally would when running large-scale events, you don’t have to pay for it.”
Eric adds that in some cases, the only way to ensure that internal video communications reach employees at all is by relying on Hive eCDN to offload the network:
“If you go to South Africa and it’s football final and you want to deliver video, there’s only Hive.”
Thanks to Hive, Eric’s team gets full situational awareness across every webcast, both in real time and across past events.
“With IT & Network Analytics, we have full visibility into the live stream as it unfolds. We check if VPN users are joining, if specific regions show network strain. And with that level of granularity, we can fix issues before anyone notices.”
IT & Network Analytics delivers end-to-end clarity, from CDN down to user-level devices. It helps the team:
“If we make any changes to the infrastructure, we can always validate them. With Hive, you don’t work on emotions anymore,” Eric says. “You work on facts.”
And that transparency doesn’t just stay within IT: Hive helps the team provide executive-level insight to technical leadership.
“Even our senior leadership was surprised at the level of insight Hive gives us. One of our top infrastructure leads said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this was possible.’ Now he’s a fan.”
At Merck, Control the Event has become essential for keeping internal video events running smoothly, all without needing a room of support staff.
Eric and his team use the tool to monitor high-stakes webcasts live – they’re able to catch unexpected issues before they escalate and respond in real time with full confidence.
And with Hive in place, Eric’s team no longer needs to over-resource internal events. Real-time monitoring, alerting, and control tools give them complete command, and that’s had a ripple effect all the way to leadership.
At Merck, internal video communications don’t happen through a single tool: the organization relies on multiple applications for streaming, webcasting, and collaboration. Whether the event runs on Microsoft Teams, Vimeo, Notified, or another platform, Hive provides consistent delivery, diagnostics, and visibility across the board.
“We know what platforms they’re using. We know the connection quality. It just works,” says Eric.
This flexibility means Merck doesn’t need to force standardization or compromise on preference. Hive adapts to the organization’s environment – not the other way around – enabling a truly multiplatform video strategy without added complexity for IT.
This high level of confidence has changed how others in the company engage with video delivery, all the way up to senior technical stakeholders who once felt the need to be deeply involved.
One senior colleague who used to be heavily present in event support now steps back entirely.
“He said, ‘I don’t have to join anymore. You have everything under control.’”
Hive gives Merck what legacy processes couldn’t: operational clarity, efficiency, and confidence in the moments that matter most.
Hive doesn’t just support IT: it transforms how the internal communications team operates. With Hive handling the technical complexity behind video delivery, comms stakeholders are free to focus on what really matters: the message.
“There’s no fear anymore in the communications department that technically there will be a hurdle. Not from the infrastructure side.”
The result is a stronger internal communications strategy built on data, reliability, and a shared confidence in the platform.
And because Hive provides both high-level executive summaries and deep technical insights, both teams work from the same source of truth – whether they’re reviewing a CEO town hall or refining their communications strategy based on previous event performance.
With Hive in place, internal communications at Merck is no longer a high-stakes production requiring IT to hold everyone’s hand. Instead, business units and communication teams are empowered to confidently run their own live video events — without needing to navigate complex workflows or request technical backup.
“People are empowered to set up their own internal comms events without complicated workflows,” says Eric.
Hive makes this possible by turning enterprise video into a scalable, self-service channel that’s easy to deploy but still fully observable by IT. Communicators gain the freedom to deliver leadership messages, department updates, or global all-hands at speed, while the infrastructure team maintains confidence and control behind the scenes.
This shift not only lightens the IT burden — it creates a culture of distributed communication ownership, where messaging flows more freely across the organization.
With video communication fully under control, Merck’s attention is turning to a new frontier: understanding whether the message actually lands.
Eric puts it plainly:
“Once the stream is stable, the next question is: are people actually watching? Is the volume turned down? Is the screen minimized? These are the signals that matter just as much as the tech.”
These are questions that go beyond infrastructure and video quality into the realm of behavioral attention and overall message impact.
That’s why Hive has built the next layer of its platform: a new capability designed to help C-suite and internal communications teams understand and measure employee attentiveness, as well as optimize how leadership messaging connects with employees. “That’s what the comms team and leadership really value,” says Eric.
This strategic-level addition to the Hive Video Experience Platform supports organizations in their move from just delivering the message to knowing how it was received, and making any adjustments needed to.
When asked what he’d tell others considering Hive, Eric doesn’t hesitate:
“Five stars. Definitely. It’s a professional solution for a professional need. We’re done guessing — now we know exactly what’s happening, from start to finish.”
And he means it.
“The Hive team know this already, I say it every time. Hive doesn’t just help you stream. It helps you succeed.”