Developing the Vision

During this part of the deployment process, needs are identified, ideas are brainstormed, and individuals or groups are tasked with developing a deployment plan.

Defining the Need: Distributing Video

Most company-wide communication was handled in e-mail and through the intranet before there was streaming media at Fabrikam. These systems are both fast and easy to use. The Web sites of individual departments provide anyone in the company quick access to static information in the form of text and graphics. For example, the site belonging to a machine shop in Detroit can be viewed by a sales representative in New York. The representative can locate details of part designs instantly and relay the information to customers.

The other main method of one-to-many communication was videotape. Television was used for training, corporate communications, inter-departmental information sharing, and in many other applications. Text and static graphics have their place, but there are many instances where video can be added to create a more engaging and effective presentation. For example, one can certainly explain how to install a bus engine transmission with text and graphics, but a carefully constructed video—or a video with supporting graphics—can be far more effective.

Videotape, however, has many drawbacks. Duplicating and distributing tapes is slow and expensive, especially compared to sending an e-mail. Managers at Fabrikam saw the intranet as a way to solve the problem. Rather than deal with tapes, why not distribute videos over the network?

A few departments experimented with downloading video files. End users could click a link on a Web page, download files to their computers, and then play them with Windows Media Player. The system worked when audiences were small, but a large number of users attempting to download files could overwhelm the network. The problem with video is its size. A broadcast e-mail message is a tiny percentage of the size of a video file. If the intranet were to be a viable mechanism for distributing video over the network, it was clear that a more robust system was needed.

Fabrikam also had a system in place for delivering live video. Many thousands of dollars were spent wiring the Toronto facility for closed-circuit television and satellite delivery. The system was expensive to maintain, and live television broadcasts required a lot of time and resources to set up. It was difficult to justify a specialized system that was used to deliver live television sporadically to select groups. Every time there was an expansion or change, there was no budget left for rewiring the closed-circuit TV and purchasing more monitors. And without upgrading and maintaining the system, it slowly lost its capability to reach a large number of employees, and was used less and less. If live video were to ever be viable, it would need to reach a large number of employees inexpensively.