The concept of video in the enterprise is not new. But the inherent problem has always been about its usefulness more than anything else.
Video can be monolithic, passive and painful to watch if executed poorly. But in context, video can be immensely valuable. A video that a mechanic can watch while fixing a car is valuable. An hour-long video interview of a product manager can be painful.
Altus is SaaS-based enterprise video search company that indexes the spoken word of a video presentation. If the video has an accompanying power point presentation, the text of the presentation is indexed, too. What results is the ability to search video and all of its content. When presented, the user can see the video, its presentation and the full text of what the presenter says.
Presentations can be viewed and reused. For example, a sales person can take certain slides from a deck and use with the video for a presentation. The user has the capability to create a link that they can send. The user may also highlight text and the video will be directed to the correlating part of the video.
This week the the company is announcing vSearch Mobile, which extends its service to the iPhone, iPad and the Blackberry. The service will be available on Android devices in July.
The service is not an app. It’s connected to a mobile version of the Altus site on the Safari browser. On the site, people have access to a network of videos and presentations that they can search for according to topic and then within the content itself.
Oracle used the Altus system to replace its annual sales event. Instead, sales people had access to hundreds of videos and presentations that they could search through to find what they needed. The site had about 70,000 downloads.
Altus is one of those companies with indirect competitors. To some extent, it competes with companies like Cisco and its Webex offering. It’s use for virtual conferences makes it comparable to a company like Proton Media, which provides a 3D virtual world that companies use for training and as a replacement for conferences.
The enterprise video market is still quite nascent but without question it has place in a collaborative environment. Its success will really come when there are more offerings that provide search and contextual capabilities.
