In a keynote at the Streaming Media East show, Tony Raimundo explains how Citigroup identified internal and external opportunities for streaming and worked within the company's existing IT structure.In a wide-ranging keynote presentation at the Streaming Media East conference in New York Tuesday, Citigroup's digital media director discussed the philosophy, business drivers and steps for bringing streaming technologies to the enterprise.
"Streaming media is a vital technology, and the reason we hold a position of influence [within Citigroup] is because we provide business benefits to our clients and business units," said Tony Raimundo, senior vice president of the Digital Media Technology group for Citigroup.
Understanding the business model of key constituents was just one cornerstone for the company's digital media development Raimundo outlined.
He also advised attendees at the "Enterprise Digital Media: Bringing It All Together" keynote to understand the entire technology environment in which streaming media must fit in order to know the impact it may have on other applications, as well as how IT can be repurposed to support a streaming media endeavor.
"We didn't want to create a stand-alone toy," said Raimundo during the presentation. "We needed the tool to be integrated with existing technologies. Don't make it a detour."
Click here to read more coverage of the Streaming Media East show.
In that regard, Raimundo's team enabled Citigroup to grab content that was already being created for the company's different constituencies—live television, live Citigroup events and presentations, internally and externally produced video-on-demand—digitize it and distribute it chiefly through desktop portals to employees, customers and partners. Much of the video is also searchable and has become part of Citigroup's growing bank of information assets.
"We took something that was valuable before, and greatly multiplied its value," he said.
Click here to read about Flash 8.
Raimundo primarily utilizes the company's existing satellite infrastructure network to distribute the streaming assets across the corporation. With a majority of its international locations outside a broadband-enabled network, the company decided to expand the satellite capabilities to send live feeds and deliver caches of on-demand content.
While the company can currently reach roughly 150,000 of its employees with its streaming information, it will soon deploy more satellites to cover additional locations in India and South America.
Although Citigroup did build out a content delivery network (CDN) with Cisco Systems to support the initiative, in another bid to keep costs down Raimundo said his IT staff consists of just five on the application development side and five on the engineering side. He was able to bring in IT and help desk staff that was already part of Citigroup to support the initiative.
The build-out was relatively affordable as a result, but Raimundo noted that many enterprises hoping to implement streaming media still must consider, and convince management of, the business drivers.
Citigroup's initiative enables the company to improve both its internal and external communications and standardize the operation to protect key corporate information assets. In addition, Raimundo said, the rollout drove cost savings, particularly in the realm of videoconferencing.
Dan Rayburn, the conference chair for Streaming Media East, was no doubt encouraged by Raimundo's focus on the business side of streaming media.
"When you stop thinking about the technology and start discussing business benefits, you know the technology is reaching a mass market," Rayburn said as he introduced Raimundo's keynote Tuesday morning.
Despite those benefits, Raimundo admitted he has an advantage that many smaller enterprises can't offer their executive management: The affordability of streaming media across the entire Citigroup corporation is often a product of scale. Unlike most companies, Citigroup is able to spread the costs of the CDN, satellites and portals across hundreds of locations and hundreds of thousands of employees.
Streaming Media East is being held May 17 and 18 at the New York Hilton Hotel. Panel and keynote sessions are broadcast live and archived by TV Worldwide, an Internet streaming company based in Chantilly, Va., and a sponsor of the show.
Web Design 
