The next company all-hands broadcast could have a lot more hands soon, thanks to Kollective’s partnership with Microsoft.
Skype Meeting Broadcast launched in preview this summer, integrating with Office 365.
Early impressions were positive, with folks appreciating the simplicity of setup and deployment.
But as appealing as simultaneously broadcasting live video to the company is, doing it over the WAN can still have devastating impact.
“IT’s number one concern is, I want video but I can’t overload the network,” said Dan Vetras, chief executive of Kollective. But if you send dozens of copies of high resolution video to thousands of employees in branch offices, that’s exactly what will happen.
So Kollective’s software breaks up the video and the end-points share bits within a branch office, meaning just one copy needs to be sent.
“We see peering rates north of 95%, and that means that 95% of the bits are coming across from a peer instead of over the Wide Area Network,” said Vetras. Since Kollective’s approach is software based, there’s no hardware to manage or purchase, making it easier to roll out.
He said that 100 customers were already using the approach, and that he expects Skype for Business’ ability to broadcast internal company messages live will be very popular, particularly now that it’s integrated with Office 365.
“Executive teams want the ability to communicate directly with employees, they want to go over the top and straight to video,” he said. “By packaging into the Office 365, it’s got broad access into the enterprise space.”
That means all sorts of potential applications, from employee training, company-wide Q&As, or announcements of new initiatives.
And with pricing based on all-you-can eat, per-seat basis, there’s less of a concern about how much the usage will impact the bottom line, particularly when compared to flying staff in for a day-long meeting.
“It costs less than an Uber ride per employee for a whole year,” said Vetras. Kollective's offering is expected in early 2016.
