Google Video for Business Launches: YouTube for Enterprise
Today Google is launching a new product for the enterprise market, Google Video for business. It's a new application in the Google Apps office suite, enabling workers to upload and share videos inside their organizations. Videos can be shared on an individual, group or company-wide basis. Google sees it being used for such things as executive communications, product training, trip reports, "social videos" for the company intranet.
We think this has the potential to break open the Web Office market, because up till now nobody has done rich media for the enterprise as an easy to use browser-based package. Google Video for Business manages to do this, mostly because of YouTube's influence.
Google Video for business is now available as part of Google Apps Premier Edition at no additional cost (the suite itself costs $50/user/year). Each Google Apps Premier Edition domain gets 3GB of Video storage per user account, with a file limit of 300 MB per video.
Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director of Google Enterprise, described Google Video for Business to us as "a whole new way of working". He claimed that rich media will be incorporated into traditional email-based business communication like never before. Google sees collaboration as "the 'soul' of Google Apps" and video as the next big step in rich collaboration. Cloud computing, said Glotzbach, is what makes this possible.
How it Works: The YouTube Factor
Google Video for business unsurprisingly has many aspects of YouTube in it. You can easily upload videos, add descriptions and tags, share videos with the click of a button, and embed them in Google Sites and other internal webpages. You can also embed videos as 'gadgets' (aka widgets) in any site that accepts Google Gadgets - e.g. Google Spreadsheets. The gadgets have the same security as web pages, meaning that only authorized users can view it no matter where it is embedded.
Other features borrowed from YouTube include search (of course, but in this case only for videos to which users have access), ability to view high-quality video, ratings, comments and additional tags, ability to download videos for viewing offline or on portable devices.
Google Video for business uses the same infrastructure that powers YouTube. In our call Google noted that YouTube currently has 13hrs of video uploaded per minute! It streams hundreds of millions videos per day. So obviously this infrastructure is robust and can easily add a few more enterprise videos to the mix.
The one big difference though between Google Video for business and YouTube, is security. In the enterprise, security is a key feature.
Google Apps Ramping Up
As indicated by this week's ReadWriteWeb poll, where right now 21% of respondants say they use Google Docs as their main word processing tool (up from 11% the same time last year), Google Apps is exhibiting strong growth and increasing acceptance as an office suite. Google itself says that more than 500,000 businesses use Google Apps, with more than 3,000 businesses signing up every day. It says Apps has more than 10 million active users and "hundreds of thousands" of paid users.
Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Talk (instant messaging), Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Start Page for creating a customizable homepage, and now Google Video for business.
Note: as well as for enterprise, Google says that a version for Google Apps Education Edition customers that allows faculty and staff to upload and share videos with students will be available on September 8 for free trial until March 9, 2009, at which point it will cost $10 per user, per year.
Google Apps vs SharePoint
When Google Sites launched at the end of February, we threw some cold water on the claim that Google Sites would compete with Microsoft SharePoint. ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez wrote that "for the small to medium size business, you could say that Google makes a strong offering as a more affordable alternative to Microsoft Servers and applications. However, it's a big jump from offering tools to a mom-and-pop as compared with a global, Fortune 500 company".
But with Google Video for business, Google has taken another step towards tackling the big enterprise market. It may well be a significant step, because with the consumerization of the enterprise these large organizations are getting used to using tools such as YouTube.
Indeed perhaps this YouTube video was one of the inspirations for the Google Video for business team ;-)
Competitive Landscape for Enterprise Video: Microsoft, Adobe, Veodia
Google says that there are video solutions for enterprises out there, but that they are "too complex and expensive for all but the largest enterprises". They also claim that competing products require proprietary hardware and software, and are difficult to maintain and use. No specific names were mentioned, but a recent article by Dan Rayburn explains how Microsoft and Adobe are both active in video solutions for enterprise:
"Historically, Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Media technologies have always dominated the enterprise market for multiple reasons, the biggest being that the WM Player was bundled into the OS and the server is cheap to deploy. And while I think Microsoft still has the majority share of the enterprise market, Adobe (ADBE) continues to get more aggressive in targeting IT decision makers inside enterprise organizations.
With Adobe making the licensing costs for FMS3 a lot cheaper than they use to be, and the fact that live Flash is now considered stable in FMS3, I am beginning to hear from more enterprise customers who are now evaluating Flash."
We mentioned SharePoint above, which allows people to upload video - but there's not much else video functionality. Microsoft also has RoundTable, a video-conferencing solution, as well as Live Meeting and Office Communications Server (which does video).
So clearly Google Video for Business targets both Microsoft and Adobe, as well as other big vendors such as Cisco. Google's solution does appear to be much easier to use, just like YouTube was/is for consumers. Note however that it is not a live video solution, so it can't be used for video conferencing.
Google told us that an early stage startup called Veodia is the only startup they're aware of doing SaaS video for businesses. We looked at Veodia back in June - check out the video below for more details. If any RWW readers know of other startups doing this, please mention in the comments.
Conclusion
Up till now enterprises have been using mostly person-to-person and text-based communication to collaborate. Video hasn't taken off in a big way, perhaps because enterprise video solutions haven't been packaged as easy-to-use consumer-like tools. Not to mention network restrictions. That's not to say video hasn't been used at all - I recall it being used a fair amount back in 2000-01 on the enterprise intranet I was in charge of at the time. However perhaps 2008 is the time when it will ramp up.
No company is better placed than Google to exploit this - it owns the world's most popular consumer online video app (YouTube) and has rapidly become the leading Web Office vendor. It's even started nipping at Microsoft's heels in office software.
There's still a long way for Google to go to catch up to Microsoft in the enterprise software world, but we think that Google Video for business will get them another couple of steps closer. What do you think?
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Interesting idea that certainly bodes well for video-makers for hire, screencasters etc. in addition to the obvious internal communications angle. The further video penetrates everyday corporate communication, the more demand there's going to be for well-made material.
This could make things quite a bit easier for on the spot training etc. Only issue is whether people are going to have time to make said videos - compared to sharing via blogs, lifestreaming, microblogging etc. video making is a major time commitment. Still, maybe it will encourage people to make videos instead of torturous powerpoint decks? Or hire in the growing number of talented videomakers, screencasters etc. looking for work. Would be video freelancers, here's your chance.
I imagine they're using the same z-grade quality video compression though, which is a bummer. Vimeo for enterprise would be a more exciting prospect in terms of *quality* (if not stability and reach).
Nice analysis, but there are some limitations such as upload size. Companies might wana have longer videos than 10 minutes limit.
Nice article. I do work for Microsoft and I'd like to mention that based on the success of our internal corporate podcasting initiative called Academy Mobile (Intro video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D3g1A5ocik ), we have announced in June '08 our 'YouTube for Enterprise' solution called Podcasting Kit for SharePoint.
It's a free add-on to SharePoint and you can learn more about it on http://www.codeplex.com/pks
OK, we showed Google how to do this with a web cam back in 2004, why in the world did it take them so long to do it :) Joke on the site I have proof. Check the link bellow if you don’t trust me. http://vlogging.blogspot.com/
Will Law and I were at Google more than 4 years ago. We also showed them mobile video blogging from a phone.
The good news is that we now have this build in the Blogtronix platform as well. All you need to have is a Flash streaming server. I am not sure how many corporate videos will end up on Google as these can be very sensitive videos. Corporate compliance will have a field day here. In general this is a great step forward and will be great for many small companies and very bad for some CDN’s like Akamai and Limelight, etc.
I recently previewed a website (equedia.com) that is a video network and multimedia social community for business and i must say that it will change the world fo finance and its insane how no one has done that before...funny how all of a sudden I see Google doing the same thing?!?!
I have a been a big fan of Google - until this year. They bash Microsoft and then do exactly what microsoft did to everyone else years back! Its only a matter of time before they get slapped with monopoly-related law suits!
Thats an awesome post, very good reading that will be useful
This looks like a nice repackaging of YouTube with an enterprise spin. Our experience selling to the enterprise though is that there are specific requirements that seem to be missing from this new offering:
1. Companies want to integrate video into their existing business processes and IT environments, they do not want to go to a dedicated YouTube page outside of their workflow. Veodia is designed to integrate into other collaboration platforms and learning management systems (single-sign-on, etc)
2. High video quality is a strong enterprise requirement and YouTube quality is not sufficient for enterprise standards, whether you want to use it for executive communications, partner communications, as a support for sales, or employee knowledge sharing.
3. Enterprises need more metrics and reports on usage to measure the success of their use of video. They also need more control for IT departments to be comfortable with it. In fact, many enterprises prevent employees from streaming from YouTube. Veodia provides administrative controls that make it more manageable and preserve enterprise networks.
4. Last but not least: no enterprise will buy a service from you if it doesn’t come with enterprise-level support. Large enterprises don’t just look at functionalities but also what level of support and Service Level Agreement (SLA) they are getting. Expectations from a paying customers are very different than expectations from a free consumer. Vendors serving that market need to have their company structured to address these requirements, with dedicated sales and support people (ask Marc Benioff from salesforce.com how he did it). It’s very hard to make a move from the consumer space to the enterprise, and you can’t run it as a side business... I’ll be curious to see how Google addresses that one.
Now, I agree with Google there’s a huge and growing demand, we’re seeing it every day with our customers, and we’ll be announcing more large customer wins next week that validate the adoption. The use of video in the enterprise is going to be big and it will dramatically change the nature of internal and external communications. Enterprise has been our only focus at Veodia the past few years and this is why we’ve been successful so far.
Guillaume Cohen, CEO
Veodia
THis is a very interesting development and the next logical step. With such a lucrative market (the enterprise one) it was bound to happen for Google.
The Googlers want another solid revenue stream they can count on should Adwords start to falter.
What better way than Fortune 500 companies hooked on Google's solution and paying $50/yr for 10,000 employees per company.
Sounds like a solid, consistent business model to me.
Adding video to Google Apps is a logical way to Google to further leverage the YouTube acquisition. However, the needs of enterprise clients go far beyond the limited capabilities announced.
We find that the majority of enterprises are interested in creating, repurposing and managing their video content in a manner that fits with their IT infrastructure and practices. Corporate IT departments are tasked with meeting the needs of marketing, training and compliance departments, each with different distribution and reporting requirements. A full-line platform like ours enables each group to easily create and manage video assets, and measure effectiveness of campaigns whether the video content is for internal or external use. They are then able to publish content for use as video email, video narrated PowerPoint presentations, or embed in their online properties. To the viewer it appears that they never left the corporate site, as the streaming services are delivered in a transparent fashion.
The ability to offer both COTS and custom video publishing solutions enables providers like us to work with enterprise and government clients. The very small end of the SMB and consumer market can benefit from a low cost solution like this addition to Google Apps, as those who pay little or nothing for services tend to accept limited functionality in return.
Paul Braun, CEO
VIDITalk
Another great example of social media going to the next level. For those who haven't been believers in social media applications for business, this should hopefully get their attention.
we threw some cold water on the claim that Google Sites would compete with Microsoft SharePoint.
Couldn't Google do the same thing with Sites they did with search -- that is, provide a standalone server. This would allay customer security fears while providing another revenue stream for Google.
I think this is a fantastic idea and I am anxious to see how enterprises use this idea and for what purposes it is most successful.
I worked with a client who deployed a YouTube-like (Flash, relatively low quality) capability and saw it used (fairly successfully) for training and data sharing.
I think I'm most excited by the idea of opening this up to people in organizations and see what they come up with...I know the go forth and create model isn't the best, but it does produce some cool and innovative solutions.
Wistia (http://wistia.com ) provides a private and secure video sharing platform for businesses. While Wistia's SaaS platform provides all of the basic video sharing features, such as uploading, automatic transcoding, and access control, our secret sauce is in making user interaction with the video measurable. We really see Google's offering focusing on these more basic features, leveraging their YouTube dominance.
From working with businesses using video for the last two years, Wistia knows that only a small fraction of the problem is getting the video from point A to point B. Most companies are not using user-generated content, but need more professional content created by in-house production departments or third party video producers. In the world of business, everything -- even video -- needs to be measurable to justify the expenditure. Wistia's private video sharing platform allows companies to get the most value from their video by providing the most sophisticated video analytics available.
Wistia's patent pending Video Engagement Tracking (VET, click here for a brief video demo: http://wistia.com/product/tracking) allows administrators to see exactly which portions of a video a specific user has watched and which they haven't. VET gives the admins complete transparency into every action a user takes while watching the video. When did they hit play, where did they seek to, which parts did they rewind to and watch again? All of these are questions which, when the answers are put together, help determine how engaged a user is with the content. YouTube "views" work well when I'm trying to get 100,000 people to watch my video. When I share a video with 50 employees that potentially cost several thousand dollars and took a month to produce, I have to know more.
These VET metrics are extremely valuable to organizations who are using video in the context of sales, high-value training, marketing, medical clinical trials -- the list goes on. To first accomplish this, I need to be able to share the video with those outside of my orginization (which I don't believe the current Google application allows). As an example, if I am a salesperson and I share a new product demo video with a prospect, having complete insight into how this prospect interacts with video allows me to assess how engaged they are with our messaging. Once I know that they are engaged, I can start a conversation with them within Wistia by giving them additional content or allowing them to ask questions timecoded to moments in the video. A prospect that goes to the page containing the video and takes no other action is much less valuable than a prospect who watched the whole video and then backed up to see information about a particular feature again. It allows me to spend more time on those prospects who are more engaged with the product and where I am more likely to close the deal.
In conclusion, we believe that the release of the Google product, as with Cisco's foray into "Enterprise TV", validates that there is a significant market for video in business. However, from our experience helping companies use video in high-value ways, we know that companies need more than these basic services (i.e. robust analytics and tracking) in order to realize the full potential of their content.
I think the general public is underestimating how robust the Google Apps suite/service is. Cloud computing is here to stay and Google, along with companies like Salesforce.com, are on the leading edge.
I found this online video (sponsored by Google, of course) Google Apps: Quick Tour really helpful in getting an overview of the entire Google Apps suite. It's not just word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The entire suite includes e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging, voice over IP and now VIDEO.
Great example of social media going to the next level. For those who haven't been believers in social media applications for business, this should hopefully get their attention.
There are a number of other companies offering SaaS video for businesses. We at vpod.tv have been operating in Europe for over 2,5 years with both SMEs and large accounts.
I agree with many of the points above about enterprise video :
1) indeed corporations want to add videos into existing information systems and processes. They use sometimes vpod.tv through APIs to merge our tools into their front-end interfaces (distribution channel training for example), or their back-end tools such as CMSes (only one interface for their users)
2) high video quality is a must. vpod.tv offers configurable video quality and formats, configurable max length or max video size, configurable number of output formats (mobile, IPTV, podcast, hi-def, low-def, etc.)
3) indeed, many external video sites are blocked by corporate firewalls, hence alternate flexible solutions are necessary (dedicated addresses, VPNs, etc.).
4) necessity of statistics, logs and analytics tools.
5) SLAs and support
6) processes for creating enterprise-level video content (storyboard, shooting, editing...)
I would add a few additional issues :
* Security of the content (not only access control with SSO or LDAP integration) but also security of the link, of forwarding mechanisms, logging of access and forwarding, etc.
* Support for publication workflows (publishers, editors...)
* Tools designed to support corporate publication (batch processing, meta-data enhancing, etc.)
* corporate networks sometimes were designed before the video-era (global frame-relay networks for example) and only go to the global internet through specific firewalls. Hence there is not enough internal bandwidth for large video consumption. This is still a problem.
Indeed, catering to the enterprise market requires a different perspective, solution, processes. vpod.tv has pioneered this market in Europe and our customers have helped us design our solutions to best address their needs. B2C solutions won't work for them, but indeed Google's solution would work for business units or SMEs with basic needs.
Rodrigo SEPULVEDA
CEO, vpod.tv
http://corp.vpod.tv
Does anyone know if it's possible to make choosen videos public for general audience?
We're school interested in recording our lessons and making them accessible for all students. We don't mind that other people would be able to see those lessons.
We just wonder if we will be supposed to pay $10 for every student that should have access to videos or not.
// Yes, I'm aware that we will can use YouTube or Google Video, but GV for bussiness offers some useful improvements that would be nice to use.