Citigroup rolls out streaming media to corporate desktops

Computerworld - Citigroup Inc. is in the middle of a multiyear IT project that will allow it to stream live or archived digital content to about 300,000 desktop PCs and other devices such as ATMs and televisions worldwide in order to deliver market updates, training or corporate announcements.
The technology Citigroup began rolling out in January is part of an integrated set of products from IBM called Digital Media for Banking. The content-delivery system was announced last week at TowerGroup's annual technology conference in Boston.
Digital Media for Banking includes IBM's Intel-based xSeries servers, Cisco Systems Inc. routers and Cisco's Application and Content Networking System, a software package that runs on network-integrated appliances or router-integrated network modules. The software gives enterprises and service providers an integrated local caching and content-delivery platform for new network services, according to Keith Myer, a marketing management executive for the digital media group at IBM.
The package also includes rich media automation software from Media Publisher Inc. in Berkeley, Calif.
Tony Raimundo, senior vice president of digital media technology at Citigroup in New York, said the company started the design of the internal media systems about two years ago. He now expects to roll out Digital Media software to 150,000 PCs in 52 offices by year's end and to another 150,000 systems during 2005.
"Ultimately, we'd like to stream it to potentially every desktop and television in Citigroup," Raimundo said. "We've done live streaming over satellite, but it was problematic because if you were a worker, you needed to be at your desk at 9 a.m. to see it."
Raimundo also said Citigroup concluded that uncontrolled media "was dangerous for our infrastructure." He said having video on demand will help improve productivity by allowing bankers, brokers and other employees to watch training or corporate information videos when it's convenient for them.

Prior to the current technology rollout, when Citigroup wanted to communicate at a companywide level, it had to set up conference rooms with live feeds. Now, Raimundo said, he's looking forward to being able to stream content directly to end users.
IBM's digital content management package is focused on four areas in financial services: video communications for banking, digital merchandising for plasma-screen televisions, digital content management for packaging and publishing video media, and digital video surveillance for indexing video scenes based on movement.
"Management of digital video surveillance, that alone is a significant cost savings," said Myer. "The ability to accurately retrieve information on a tape at a specific time is invaluable."
IBM's repository works byplacing metadata with the streaming video, which allows it to be more easily searched. The software also lets administrators determine what to save.
"If a camera's in a hallway, there's no need to keep stuff without movement," Myer said.
Guillermo Kopp, an analyst at Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup, said that while there's nothing new about associating metadata with streaming video, audio or graphic files for data mining and distribution purposes, IBM has structured it in a way that links the video with other digital records.
"Because of this semantic structure, it is linking [the media] to other records that the bank keeps in storage: customer records, product records, marketing information, customer analytics. It's about the structured linkage that's embedded into IBM's model that makes it different," Kopp said.