The world is getting to be a smaller place.
For evidence, look no further than this month’s launch of the new hosted video presentation solution from Thomson (
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The company’s new platform – called the
Thomson Reuters Multimedia Centre – packages a lot of the software technology that Thomson Reuters (
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One of the fresh ingredients of that platform is feature tucked away on the administrative side of Thomson’s software offering that reflects the global nature of Thomson’s current Webcast services business: an option that allows Webcast distributors to manage Webcasts offered in multiple languages.
The language feature is really elegant in its simplicity. Essentially, each self-contained Webcast container has a series of options for entering on-screen information in a specific language. Viewers choose the language they want via their player window. Once a language option is selected, the corresponding information in the proper language is retrieved from the specified location in the Thomson Reuters archive.
To the user, it looks like the Webcast is multi-lingual. To the Webcast administrator, it’s simply a process of leveraging some basic software programming to manage content more effectively – even it that content is in different languages.
The Thomson language feature is pretty straight-forward. From a development perspective, the software programming that makes the language option possible appears to be relatively basic. You can expect that any content management vendors that do not feature language support today will add features in short order comparable to the Thomson language offering.
The most encouraging aspect of the Thomson language offering is that it did not require a massive upgrade in video codecs or network capacity to create a better viewer experience. Rather, Thomson simply applied some old fashioned creativity in developing hosted software that helps to automate the process of managing content in a multi-lingual environment.
And while not all corporate Webcasters need such language support, the feature is relatively timely for Thomson. The biggest increases in online video spending in 2011, according to an Interactive Media Strategies (
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What remains to be seen is whether a global perspective on the development of these presentation platforms will have an impact on Thomson’s ability to win business from corporate customers with operations across the globe.
Steve Vonder Haar is Research Director and Founder of Interactive Media Strategies and is responsible for the firm's coverage of the enterprise Web Communications sector. To read more of his articles, please visit please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Patrick Barnard 
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