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Case Study
Since 2002, Softech Worldwide LLC's software has been delivering video for training, learning and education to every employee's desktop for formal and informal learning in Veterans Affairs as a part of their VA Knowledge Network Employee Education Systems.
Business Problem: Training Dilemma
Tasked with figuring out how to deliver 40 hours of training
annually to each of its more than 250,000 employees around the
country, without spending a fortune
Business Solution
The Customer found the answer to its training dilemma in the
satellite network it used to provide unidirectional broadcasts
to its major medical centers across the country, including
Puerto Rico. The Customer had served up four channels of live
and prerecorded content, mostly training and news - essentially
a private cable TV service - out of an uplink center in St.
Louis. It used dedicated bandwidth on PanAmSat's Galaxy 10
satellite
Bandwidth Challenges
Unidirectional broadcasting, in which each user gets a dedicated
copy of the video programming, wasn't going to work. Heavily
populated network segments would have clogged quickly.
Multicasting, which is inherent in a satellite network, made the
perfect solution. With IP multicast, the Customer's Employee
Education Service (EES) easily could blast out a single version
of a stream or file to each employee needing the training. With
IP multicast, a single video stream gets sent to multiple LAN
users.
The Customer's IT Vendors and Partners, and its own Network
specialists figured the satellite offered them the best means of
beaming bandwidth-intensive live and on-demand video content to
individual desktops in the hospitals without disrupting the
terrestrial WAN.
Video Knowledge and Learning Solution
Once CISCO ACNS network infrastructure has been laid, need for a Network aware VIDEO based corporate video & Learning solution was identified. Solution must also be able to address need to manage content & deliver content, track user completions, apply learning credits to the Employee Databases and provide a single sign-on method of Authentication.
A Web Based Video Knowledge Network by Softech Worldwide provided all nuts and bolts to manage ( add, edit, modify) content, deliver live or on-demand content, manage users, provide complete user tracking, keep record of viewing history, crediting history to each employee’s profile over this award winning content delivery network.
End Result
The $4.5 million project let the Customer meet federal and
departmental training mandates while creating a better-educated
workforce and reaping huge cost-savings over alternative
methods.
The cached content - a video demonstrating blood-handling
techniques, for example - is delivered upon request using
unicast. Each content engine can store about 30G/bytes or
approximately 60 hours of material at a time, with content
rotated in and out by the EES. Users access the available
content via a Web interface by Softech Worldwide and view the
streams using Cisco's IPTV player or Windows Media.
Savings
Additionally, the Customer can educate its employees on a
broader basis. For example, after Customer specialists attended
the annual American Telemedicine Association conference, they
held an eight-hour seminar in Long Beach, Calif., to share what
they learned and related it the Customer's needs.
A single H.320 [ISDN] video call at 384K bit/sec is about $50 an
hour, plus some money for the bridge that connects participants.
Now, there's no additional cost for all the streaming users.
Overall, the EES expects to get a $25 million return on its
investment over the next three years by delivering content
directly to users at their desktops |
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