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Workstream by YouSendIt Helps Keep the Educational Media Revolution Moving Forward
It was a revolution that began in 1969 with a simple question: Can television be used to teach young children? It didnt take very long to get the answer to that question a resounding Yes! as programs including Sesame Street, The Electric Company and other acclaimed shows proved that television could, indeed, be something much more than a mindless babysitter or electronic wasteland. While the names of the specific television programs may be most familiar to viewers, Sesame Workshop is the international nonprofit educational organization that produces these and many other programs as well as content for multiple media platforms on a wide range of issues including literacy, health and military deployment. These programs and materials help young children and families in over 150 countries develop critical skills, acquire healthy habits and build emotional strength to prepare them for lifelong learning. In its overall organizational and production role, Sesame Workshop provides the infrastructure and staff that make the magic on our TV screens and in other materials not only brilliant, but seemingly effortless. Behind the scenes, however, that is made possible by smart planning, talented people and effective technology, including Workstream by YouSendIt.
THE PROBLEM Organization needed an efficient, cost-effective way to transfer large files securely to and from dozens of production partners and thousands of licensing partners around the world. Prior file transfer solutions were difficult to use, spurring employees to find other unofficial methods. FTP complexity decreased employee productivity and generated dozens of help desk calls to IT each week. THE SOLUTION Workstream by YouSendIt Outlook plug-in and mobile app for iPad RESULTS Increased program and content production efficiency. Increased employee productivity across the organization. Reduced calls to IT help desk. IT visibility into and oversight of the file sharing process. Greater protection for organizations intellectual property.
Need to Share Business Content Efficiently With Partners Around the World
While were based out of New York and have our only office here, explains Noah Broadwater, Chief Technology Officer of Sesame Workshop, we work with 34 partners partners who create their own versions of Sesame Street in their own languages with their own characters that are representative of their own cultures. We work closely with them to guide them through the process. We work to make sure they adhere to the standards weve established regarding educating children through the power of media. Aside from that, we also have thousands of licensing partners around the world with whom were constantly working to create products that are grounded in our mission.
The revenue generated from those products goes right back into funding the development of our programs and educational materials. Working with so many co-production partners and licensing partners requires Sesame Workshop to share business content in the form of large files, such as video, animation and graphics files, rapidly and securely. Until recently, large files were shared back and forth, initially as email attachments, and later using FTP systems. Both of these approaches, however, proved impractical email because of attachment size limitations and FTP because of its complexity, need for IT involvement and concerns about security. At first, says Broadwater, when email couldnt handle the large files sizes, our production partners in places like India, would film shows and send us the tapes in the mail. Wed have to wait to receive them, mark them up and then ship them back to them. This process took a great deal of time. Thats when the organization began using FTP. However, FTP had its own problems largely ones of complexity and diverting limited IT staff from other work. Broadwater comments that Sesame Workshop staff hated FTP, finding it anything but user-friendly.
Noah Broadwater
We deployed YouSendIt along with the Outlook plug-in to an initial group of users. It took about a day for that implementation. Its kind of flawless for our users. By having it integrated with Outlook, from their perspective theyre just sending email. They dont even think about it. They just put in the name of the intended recipient, hit send and the files are sent. Thats a world of difference from the experience they had with FTP. Thats why were planning to deploy it to all 450 of our employees.
It was a win-win for users and IT, says Broadwater. We initially deployed Workstream with the Outlook plug-in to an initial group of users. It took about a day for that implementation. Its kind of flawless for our users. By having it integrated with Outlook, from their perspective, theyre just sending email. They dont even think about it. They just put in the name of the intended recipient, hit send and the files are sent. Thats a world of difference from the experience they had with FTP. Thats why were planning to deploy it to all 450 of our employees. The three biggest groups using Workstream, says Broadwater, are our international team (the people who work with our co-producers), our digital media team (the group that works with our vendors to develop games for our website, for consoles and for apps) and our licensing group, which deals with our product vendors.
About YouSendIt
YouSendIt, Inc. is the leading provider of extended enterprise collaboration services, with millions of registered users in 193 countries across 98 percent of the Fortune 500. The companys online services span from simple file sharing to a comprehensive content collaboration suite of services that allow users across an entire organization to securely share content, sign documents, and access files from any mobile device or PC. Workstream by YouSendIt, the companys flagship enterprise content collaboration offering, allows professionals to collaborate on content with users both inside and outside their organization while providing IT with centralized security policy and administrative controls to manage the flow of work across the entire extended enterprise. Headquartered in Campbell, CA, YouSendIt is a privately held company backed by venture capital firms Adams Street Partners, Alloy Ventures, Emergence Capital Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds and Sigma Partners. To learn more, please visit http:/ /workstream.yousendit.com/ or call 877.652.1878.
YouSendIt, Inc.
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