Your online training programs may consist of hundreds of hours of rich digital training videos and interactive programs. For some, existing infrastructure can easily manage the increased traffic. But for many of us, the additional surge in traffic can impact not only your employees’ training experience.
If your company is like most organizations, you are putting greater emphasis on online training, which means much of the content that used to be provided by an in-person trainer is being adapted to online training formats. To increase students’ success, online training programs are enriched with multi-media content such as high-definition videos, an abundance of images, and interactive exercises and tests.
Depending on the size of your organization, your online training programs may consist of hundreds of hours of rich digital training videos and interactive programs. For some companies, their existing infrastructure can easily manage the increased traffic. But for many of us, where bandwidth upgrade is cost prohibitive, the additional surge in traffic can impact not only your employees’ training experience, but also your business operations and ultimately your customers.
Think about when your employees are doing their training. Most likely it is during the workday when the rest of your company is interacting with customers. And, although you may have only a few employees going through online training, the bandwidth eaten up by the training program, can cause the content to load improperly, reducing training effectiveness and increase the time required to complete the training. Worst yet, the surge in bandwidth demand can cause other devices at your location to slow down or function improperly.
So what can you do? There are basically two options, you can offload training content to a public CDN service or increase your bandwidth to handle the uptick. Both options come with a price, literally. Keep in mind, you will be charged for every MB downloaded from a public CDN service and your upgraded bandwidth charge is reoccurring, month after month. So, even a seemingly small upgrade can end up costing you tremendous amounts of money over the course of the year.
A more cost effective way to handle heavier traffic loads is opt for an Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) solution. An eCDN uses your company’s network to quickly and inexpensively delivery digital content because it stores content in cache locally, freeing up valuable bandwidth that would otherwise be consumed. In addition, eCDN can dynamically recognize any upstream content changes and then automatically sync this content outside of operating hours, preventing potentially painful network congestion. This configuration is done at the content policy engine level for content that can be accelerated, freeing up bandwidth used throughout the organization.
You want a trained workforce. The solution for faster online training is not to increase your bandwidth or signing up for a public CDN service, which will mean accruing new monthly fees, but to create an eCDN that alleviates the traffic spikes caused by additional content traveling through your network. This means you can not only see improved user experience at all of your company’s locations, but you can also save considerable amounts of money!