Top Tips 19
What critical questions should you be asking your streaming provider ?
Brightcove ’ s VP of go-to-market , Eric Rudolf shares his advice for what to ask when talking directly to streaming providers
In November last year , Glisser added Brightcove to its roster of video and streaming providers . The partnership means that anyone adding Glisser Elements plug-and-play tools to their website or running activity with Glisser ’ s ‘ off-theshelf ’ platform , can integrate Brightcove ’ s broadcast-grade streaming technology into their virtual or hybrid events .
In January , Brightcove ’ s VP of go-to-market , Eric Rudolf joined Glisser ’ s chief evangelist , Vanessa Lovatt on a webinar to share those critical questions to ask any streaming provider to ensure high reliability , security and scalability .
“ What planners need from a streaming service varies depending on their individual requirements ,” Rudolf says . “ Some will have challenges relating to scale and the size of audience , while others will be very focused on content control and restricting access to certain users . Whether it ’ s about reliability , scale , playback and viewing , security or support ,
you need to know the questions to ask in order to mitigate risk and receive the right assurances that your requirements will be met .”
Reliability “ Event streaming technology includes the streaming engine , the player , and day-of-event
support and most platform providers offer multiple thirdparty streaming engines to deliver a client ’ s content ,” Rudolf says . “ So the first point to get across when it comes to reliability is that , you have a choice of which streaming engine to use . So assess that choice . Some will be more feature rich , and some will fit your event better than others , so ask about the options and do your due diligence . Streaming providers can be swapped in and out of the tech stack with ease .”
In order to help with that due diligence , Rudolf recommends asking three critical questions around reliability , with the following additional advice :
Question 1 : What is your currently established uptime ? “ If the provider doesn ’ t have an answer or they don ’ t calculate it constantly in real-time , that ’ s a major red flag . Uptime should
ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
be a key differentiator for any reliable streaming service . And if they can provide an uptime , ask them to provide the data and how they calculate it . It should be in the range of 99.9 % or higher . If you ’ re not comfortable with the math , ask to speak to a couple of customer references .”
Question 2 : How do you handle failover ? “ If I ’ m running my event on your platform and the stream drops for whatever reason , is the failover automatic ? Or is it manual ? Does someone on the event owner ’ s team have to notice that the stream has gone down and then call you ? Or does the failover seamlessly kick-in ? If it ’ s the latter , how many seconds or milliseconds does that take ?”
Question 3 : What is your redundancy plan ? “ People who stream video as a profession should always have redundancy plans in place should a worst-case scenario