By Eric Kraieski

One hot application for corporate streaming is e-learning, projected by Gartner Group to become a $34 billion market in 2005, up from $2.1 billion in 2001. Video streaming is an important component of e-learning since people show greater attention and retention through visual experiences. Supporting this premise, UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian has authored several books that recognize body language as the most effective tool that generates knowledge retention, followed by voice tone and word choice. Perhaps this is why high-quality, video-based e-learning is superior to static initiatives which often fail to have a significant and lasting impact on students.

Combined with the Internet, video-based e-learning can leverage the familiar user interface of a Web browser and the ubiquitous access of the Internet, making training available virtually everywhere, at anytime. This allows organizations to reach every target student and offers an effective, self-paced learning mechanism -- providing consistency in course content and the ability to measure completion rates and retention.

Success Depends On Two Factors
The success of a video-based e-learning solution depends on two primarily factors: compelling, effective content and the ability for the user to access content efficiently with consistently high-quality service. The overall solution must also scale to meet anticipated enrollment and usage patterns. Important questions to ask before determining the best streaming solution needed: Will tens, hundreds, or thousands of students access the system during peak usage periods? Are these users geographically dispersed in a home-type environment, or are they clustered in groups such as branch campuses or remote offices? Do users have LAN access, broadband access, or dial-up access to the learning management system (LMS)?

Compelling Content
 State-of-the-art production tools and high-performance PCs allow for quick in-house production of high-quality video content. Depending upon the size of the organization and training purpose, this can be as simple as capturing a classroom lecture with an accompanying slide presentation, or it can be a studio-quality production with role playing created by professional actors and courseware designers. Training material that is company specific -- such as new product launches -- will require custom courseware development, whereas "soft skills" training -- like sales skills and customer support -- may be purchased from experts in the field and then augmented with company-specific content.

Whichever creation path is chosen, material that is too general or dated will have limited long-term value. Course material that is specific and concise keeps audience attention and leads to higher course completion rates and knowledge retention -- 30 minute topics are much more effective than 3 hour lectures. Also, by providing the user access to on-demand features such as rewind, pause, and jump, the user can control his experience and learning pace.

User Access
If there are concerns about video e-learning, the biggest comes from the IT department required to support high-volume streaming within the current infrastructure. While most text, Web pages, and pictures can be downloaded fairly efficiently, video streaming requires that a constant bandwidth connection be maintained between the client and the server during the entire streaming experience. This concern in understandable, considering that five concurrent users pulling 300 Kbps streams fully consume a single T1 line.

There is no disputing that the combination of compelling content, high course completion rates, and broad organizational acceptance of video e-learning will result in higher utilization of the IT infrastructure, but remember, this is an indicator of a successful training initiative. The increased load is manageable. Decisions regarding how the increased load is handled should be based on the ROI expected from the training initiative while taking into consideration the concerns of the IT department -- not the other way around.

Delivery options associated with e-learning content are detailed in the chart below. The chart shows the recurring monthly WAN charges that are required to support streaming clients in WAN and LAN environments.

It is important to notice that once the content is on the LAN, hundreds of concurrent users can be supported locally without further impacting WAN bandwidth. Through the use of hierarchical network design and LAN switching technologies, even larger numbers of clients can be supported locally without impacting other LAN-based applications.

Building A Streaming Delivery Network
There are several methods for delivering training content to a broader audience; the proper one for a given deployment requires a balance between cost, ROI, and utilization. The fundamental choice is between expanding the centralized streaming capacity or migrating to a distributed, edge-streaming environment. Other alternatives include an outsourced or hosted model, or a hybrid approach combining elements of centralized and distributed environments.

When opting to increase capacity in a centralized model, the T1 interface can be upgraded to a T3 connection. With this approach, the number of concurrent users jumps by a factor of 30 times the original user count, with the monthly WAN cost per user decreasing by 65 percent. While the monthly WAN expense increased from $1,000 to $10,000, this may be the preferred and most economical approach when many remote locations with few users must be supported. Other services are available between T1 and T3 rates which may better balance bandwidth and expenses.

Another option is to maintain the current WAN infrastructure and deploy edge-streaming devices at branch campuses and remote locations. The remote locations will then be able to support hundreds of users locally while sharing the same T1 interface. Streaming content is pulled over the WAN only once, and is then delivered as needed to the local users. With capital costs for the devices less than $20,000 and monthly savings of $9,000 versus upgrading to a T3, payback is achieved in about two months. This approach is ideal for locations that require concurrent training access to 10 or more students.

Whichever method is used, other factors need to be considered when building a streaming delivery network, such as server protocol support and full interoperability with other server and client software. This is generally assured through vendor certification processes. The server product must be fully interoperable with the target content format, whether it is Microsoft Windows Media, RealMedia, QuickTime or MPEG.

The server must also be able to scale to support the anticipated workload. Factors to consider include on-demand performance needs, storage requirements, and the ability to deliver the highest levels of quality of service.

Conclusion
Streaming has clearly moved beyond the phase of consumer novelty. Organizations such as Samsung Electronics, M.I.T., and the U.S. General Services Administration have all embraced streaming to support core operations in commercial, educational, and government sectors.

These enterprises use streaming because the benefits are clear: Streaming provides much greater speed and agility when compared to obsolete training methods like CD-ROM distribution. Streaming also provides broad access to distributed users and allows the training experience to be controlled based on a user's schedule and learning pace. Most importantly, streaming provides for efficient communications that assure organizational alignment and training effectiveness.

Eric Kraieski is vice president of marketing for Vividon. Vividon builds streaming appliances that radically improve the economics of delivering audio and video over networks. The Vividon SDA device is suitable for centralized and distributed streaming applications in enterprise, edge and service provider environments. Supporting a wide range of applications including broadcast audio, large file downloads and full video-on-demand, the SDA appliance has been independently tested for interoperability by Microsoft and RealNetworks.

This article originally appeared on TMCnet.com in August 2002.