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Revolutionizing Live Video Streaming for Enterprises: robust features, affordable price

In the age of digital transformation, businesses are constantly seeking innovative solutions to connect with their global workforce, streamline training processes, and engage audiences in real-time. The launch of IBM Enterprise Video Streaming new Silver, Gold and Platinum pricing plans marks a groundbreaking moment in the world of enterprise video platforms, offering secure live video streaming and on-demand content delivery to large global audiences, at an affordable price point.

Designed for a myriad of uses, including employee town halls, training classes, and digital events, IBM Enterprise Video Streaming is set to redefine the way organizations communicate and collaborate.


IBM Video Streaming 2023 Price Increases

Tackling Broadcast Delays and Syncing Issues from Streaming

Please note upcoming price increase on Silver, Gold and Platinum plans:

This blog post provides a notification of a price increase that will go into effect April 3, 2023 for the IBM Video Streaming Silver, Gold and Platinum editions only. The new price will apply to all new orders as well as upgrades and downgrades. However, for customers who purchased plans on the IBM Marketplace via credit card who are on auto-renew status, your price will remain the same. The increase will only be applied to existing accounts if action is taken to upgrade or downgrade to a different plan. Similarly, if a plan is cancelled and then purchased again, the new price will apply when the new purchase is made.

New prices are as follows:

Silver Edition new price: $129 USD (with new overage price of $.65 USD)
Gold Edition new price: $649 USD (with new overage price of $.35 USD)
Platinum Edition new price: $1299 USD (with new overage price of $.25 USD)

The prices for these plans have not changed since IBM acquired Ustream in 2016, however, our costs have increased and we now need to make price adjustments in order to continue to provide the same level of excellent service to our customers.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the IBM Support team.

Thank you.


Virtual Event Enhancements Include Registration Form Logic

We’re excited to announce some new event registration features that have been added to IBM Enterprise Video Streaming! Theses virtual event enhancements for registration form logic and improved editing make it easier and more efficient for you to manage your digital events and get the most out of our platform.

Enhancements include advanced form logic to control what fields are displayed for specific attendees as well as increased flexibility for editing a form once it’s been published and there are active registrations. With the new Enterprise Video Streaming registration form features, customers will be able to more easily efficiently manage events and get the most out of IBM Enterprise Video Streaming.


Secure Virtual Event Platform Enhancements

We’re excited to announce a new solution for Virtual Events that allows customers to host events online on the highly secure and reliable IBM Enterprise Video Streaming platform. This secure virtual event platform provides an out-of-the-box solution for creating customizable event websites, replacing a lot of manual work and dramatically reducing lead times.

With the new Enterprise Video Streaming – Virtual Event solution with Microsite, customers can now easily create a fully functioning event website with built-in registration and event management capabilities in just a few minutes. This virtual event product can be used again and again for events of all sizes, easily scaling up or down depending on the scope of each subsequent event. Each virtual event has a start and end date, can span one or many days, and can support one or many online stages (live channels) at the same time. The new solution builds on Watson Media’s existing expertise in channel-based live video streaming. 


Live Playlists for Simulated Live Events Are Better Than Ever

Simulated Live, Simulive or Semi Live – whichever name you prefer, refers to an online digital event that is broadcasted to a live audience watching and interacting in real time, but the video presentations they see are actually pre-recorded.

From the attendee experience, a simulated live event looks just like a live presentation that is scheduled to occur at a set time of day and can be added to their calendar ahead of time like any upcoming live event. If an attendee logs in late or after the presentation has started, they will not be able to rewind to watch the content that they missed from the beginning because the event appears to be happening in real-time – and in some ways it is! In fact, some argue that simulated live events can be more engaging because the speakers can actually focus on actively reaching out with participants continually throughout the event to keep them engaged. And all sessions are automatically archived so attendees who miss any portion will be able to watch again on-demand after the event.

There are many reasons why you might consider pre-recording the video presentations for your upcoming event ranging from cost considerations to risk avoidance to speaker preferences and availability. These include:


Live Monitoring for Virtual Event Organizers

While an online event is in-motion, most organizers aren’t fully aware of the health of the live stream and are only alerted if there is a massive connection failure. IBM Watson Media’s new Live Monitoring Tool helps event organizers see what’s really happening in granular detail so that proactive measures can be taken at the first sign of any issue, even if it’s only impacting a smaller portion of the audience. The additional analytics insights also help to extract business value. Going beyond what historical analysis offer, this gives organizations the ability to inspect and analyze data in order to quickly respond to enhance performance or “right the ship”.

While IBM Watson Media has long had an impressive array of real-time analytics, the new console allows customers to monitor live streaming events to an incredibly granular degree. This includes tools to investigate issues to support real-time decision making, such as validating how widespread buffering issues might be and check the overall stream health. This use case can help determine if a report of a viewer experiencing buffering issues is an isolated problem associated with the viewer’s connection or if it points to a larger problem possibly due to connection issues at the broadcaster’s side.

Read on to learn more about the real time monitoring features available to all customers and supports multiple channels all broadcasting at the same time.  


Live Streaming Meetings from Microsoft Teams


This article details how to live stream a meeting from Microsoft Teams to IBM’s video streaming services. As a result, the audience can be greatly expanded as IBM’s delivery infrastructure can support huge audiences. This session will also be automatically archived for later use, with AI-driven processes for automatic closed caption generation and search capabilities. 


Virtual Events for Open or Private VIP Only Audiences

virtual events and online conferences for VIP audiences

Virtual events are a requirement for companies big and small in today’s business culture. While IBM Watson Media has been streaming online conferences for many years, we’ve added several new features to our Enterprise Video Streaming platform to help event managers easily spin up new virtual events (or webcasts) at any time, and customize them for specific audiences. 

A Virtual Event has a pre-registration phase, a live phase, and a post-event phase where archive recordings are available. IBM Watson Media makes running frequent events easy across all these phases. 

This article explains the virtual event attendee experience and event management features within the IBM Enterprise Video Streaming platform. It discusses utilizing viewer tracking functionality to track who is watching, going over what type of data can be extracted. The piece concludes by reviewing the Q&A module, which adds additional opportunities for employee engagement and valuable organization facing feedback.


Live and On-Demand Playlists for video playback

One of Watson Media’s most important features is getting a facelift!

Many of our customers use IBM Watson Media to support simulated live streaming events using the live playlist feature. Event managers love this capability as it allows them to set up fully produced broadcasts without the need for encoders or live production staff. Additionally, content owners create dynamic playlists associated with on-demand content. As of today, we’ve combined the live and on-demand platform capabilities for playlists to more closely unify the experience for broadcasters and content creators. Now, there is a single place to manage all types of playlists.

Playlists can be useful for event managers who want to loop live broadcasts after finishing the run of show, or fill a channel with continuous programming leading up to a broadcast, or run a live event entirely consisting of pre-recorded content.


IBM announces new chat for enhanced engagement

new chat

Hosting virtual events has become a practice that many event managers have had to adopt in the wake of the world pivoting to support remote engagement. In addition to providing appealing quality content for viewers, it has become exceedingly important to ensure that viewers also have a way to engage and communicate with others to enhance online experiences for those who would otherwise be connecting with people in person.

As a result, IBM has redesigned the existing chat functionality to provide a new, reliable and scalable performance while offering highly engaging tools that could make the difference for virtual event participants – all while maintaining the core chat feature set that IBM customers have become accustomed to. Below are highlights of the new chat features that customers can start using today.