Microsoft announced the general availability of live events in Microsoft 365 in March, allowing anyone to create live and on-demand video using Microsoft Stream, Teams or Yammer. Like most Microsoft 365 solutions, it’s already taken off.
Most IT pros we talk to tell us they’re already using or testing Microsoft Stream. In fact, a recent Wainhouse survey found nearly 65% of organizations are evaluating Microsoft Stream as part of their video communications strategy and 28% have already adopted it.1
The Challenge
Microsoft Stream is a great option for streaming video (and it’s free with Microsoft 365), but almost everyone is concerned what it’ll do to their network. Beyond a poor-quality viewing experience riddled with buffering and glitches, they’re worried about how it will impact business-critical operations.
High-quality video eats up a lot of bandwidth, and most corporate networks aren’t sized to handle it. The more you scale, the more your network becomes stressed. To help paint a picture, it takes approximately 20,000 mbps of bandwidth to webcast to 10,000 people.2 Just imagine what that would do to your network (and the rest of your business applications!). All of a sudden with Microsoft 365, your network has to handle 20,000 mbps extra data. It’s like trying to push a gallon of water through a straw all at one time.
Microsoft Stream is a powerful video platform, but it can’t solve enterprise bandwidth constraints.
The Solution
If you want to implement Microsoft Stream but are worried about your network, it’s time to explore an enterprise content delivery network (eCDN). Like a CDN, an eCDN accelerates video delivery, but does it for videos you’re sending across your corporate network. The most common eCDNs are multicast, video caching and peer-to-peer.
- Multicast: Distributes a single video stream across the enterprise network to be watched by hundreds or thousands of viewers simultaneously.
- Video Caching: Stores and distributes video from strategic locations around the network, typically close to concentrations of viewers near the edge of the enterprise WAN.
- Peer-to-Peer: Uses available connected personal devices already on the network (peers) to host and distribute segments of the video.
Ramp was the first eCDN verified for Microsoft 365, and is one of the third-party eCDNs integrated with the Microsoft Stream. Our software solutions—Multicast+ and OmniCache—efficiently, securely and reliably solve network congestion. They significantly reduce the bandwidth it takes to distribute high-quality from Microsoft Stream to every person on your network.
Next-Generation Multicasting
Ramp Multicast+ is the most efficient eCDN for Microsoft 365. It sends a single video stream simultaneously to every person in your enterprise without using any more bandwidth than needed for one viewer. Going back to our example of needing approximately 20,000 mbps of bandwidth to webcast to 10,000 people, Multicast+ only uses 2 mbps because it sends a single video stream for every viewer to watch.
This level of efficiency and predictability makes it the preferred eCDN for enterprises with multicast-enabled networks using Microsoft 365, and it’s the only direct replacement for organizations using end-of-life (EOL) multicast solutions. With pre-event simulations and insightful analytics, you can easily monitor and assess the health of your video network before, during and after live video events.
Intelligent Video Caching
Ramp OmniCache™ is the only intelligent video caching solution integrated with Microsoft Stream. OmniCache software is deployed on the LAN to serve video to nearby viewers. Viewers get their video from the local cache instead of the cloud. This means the video is only travelling short distances versus huge amounts of data travelling across your entire network. As a result, you can save 90% or more on WAN and internet bandwidth.
OmniCache supports the widest variety of use cases and deployment scenarios. Its ability to scale effortlessly gives you flexibility to address network congestion gradually as demand for video grows over time. And unlike other eCDNs, viewers can watch both live streams and VOD without installing software or plugins on their PC, tablet or mobile phone.
As the only multicast and video caching options for Microsoft 365 Stream, Multicast+ and OmniCache are easy to use and manage. You just install our software and select your preferred Ramp solution when you configure your Stream environment. Easy peasy!
Want to Learn More?
Meet with us during Microsoft Ignite or stop by our booth #2428 to see how Ramp can solve network congestion. Our team will introduce you to our multicasting and video caching eCDN solutions and show you the potential to save both bandwidth and budget.
Click here to schedule a meeting.
Additional resources:
- Ramp/Microsoft 365 Video Solution Brief >>
- Multicast+: Next-Generation Multicast in the Age of HTML5 >>
- Multicast+ Solution Brief >>
- OmniCache Solution Brief >>
1Wainhouse Research: Survey Insight: Enterprise Video, ITDM Perspectives – North America Q3 2019
2For this calculation, we’re assuming one video stream is equal to 2mbps.
