The video streaming market in western Europe is forecast to grow in the next five years, from around US$25 million in 2001 to nearly US$200 million in 2006, according to Video Streaming for Enterprises: forecast revenues for service providers, a new report published by Analysys. Thanks largely to extensive business applications, for corporate communications, training and marketing and enhanced investor relations, video streaming revenue and traffic will grow by an average of 90% and 50% annually to 2006, says Analysys, but 2005 will see the largest growth spurt.
“Video streaming provides instantaneous corporate communication in a very engaging and emotionally forceful manner,” says Margaret Hopkins, author of the report. “An SME can now produce a webcast of its chairman’s address, using a digital camera costing a few hundred dollars and free download software for encoding and playing the resulting stream.”
According to Analysys, a large market for content provision will also be created in order to provide effective, quality output. The snag with video streaming is the amount of bandwidth required for an effective service. Bandwidth is expensive and for this reason telecoms operators, purveyors of babdwidth, have pushed streaming for some time in order to reap the financial rewards. Analysys see several alternatives for corporate clients including content delivery networks and IP multicasts.
“Most TOs [telecoms operators] lack the expertise to provide these types of service, and will need to either form partnerships or acquire companies,” says Hopkins. “We have seen a spate of recent acquisitions in the area – Williams has bought iBeam, Cable & Wireless has bought Digital Island, and Adero has been acquired by Colt.”
