Today, both enterprise corporations and public-facing organizations are using the power of cloud-based video collaboration to transform how they connect. For example, a July 2016 Government Accountability Office report surrounding Executive Order 13589 cited that an increase in the use of video conferencing saved the Justice Department an estimated $16.3 million in one year. According to a report from HTF Market Intelligence, the market for virtual events is expected to grow at about a 22% compound annual growth rate up to the year 2021.

We are proud to announce that the Air Force Association, a nonprofit professional military organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia that educates about, advocates for and supports the mission of the United States Air Force, has been able to save more than $30,000 in travel expenses over a four-month period between November 2016 and March 2017 by implementing Vidyo. Using Vidyo’s cloud service, the AFA has been able to easily click-to- conduct board, council and committee meetings remotely across a multitude of variable network connections and an array of personal devices used by its thousands of volunteers.

vidyo nonprofit government air force association

Photo: Air Force Association

Enterprise corporations are familiar with the communications challenges of connecting thousands of employees across global offices at scale (such as Bloomberg LP, who turned to Vidyo to visually connect 18,000 employees around the world.) The AFA is similarly driven by a network of 95,000 volunteer members across the United States, throughout 14 regions and more than 200 chapters. By eliminating unnecessary travel expenses with video, they expect to save upwards of $80,000 annually (about 10% of their yearly travel budget) by using Vidyo’s cloud service. This will allow the organization to free up key resources to do what they do best – delivering support to active duty, guard, reserve and civilian Air Force members – before, during, and beyond their time in service.

In today’s highly collaborative work environments, simplicity and seamlessness are key for communicating with stakeholders both within and outside of an organization. Being able to easily deploy a simplified, cloud-based video service has helped the AFA avoid many of the technical and architectural challenges that come with connecting many external participants on different devices and varying levels of bandwidth connection to a web conference. The AFA found that more traditional web conferencing tools lacked the quality, unification, features (such as content sharing) and user-friendliness that their staff, volunteers and many guest participants needed to ensure that everyone could productively connect and collaborate.

As a nonprofit with limited resources, the AFA needed the simplicity and affordability of a cloud-based video solution that would reduce upfront costs while reliably connecting them, regardless of how and from where their employees and volunteers are calling in from. AFA volunteers, who are widely dispersed across the country, regularly drive their own meetings and collaborate across an array of personal devices and varying wifi network connections. Internet connections can be often far from perfect; the Vidyo technology platform is designed for reliable, consistent performance over mobile, where cellular connections may provide low bandwidth — making it the right fit for a nonprofit whose volunteers work from everywhere.

Traditional web conferencing solutions can be inconsistent and unfriendly, depending on which web browser or operating system you are using. For the volunteer-driven AFA, this was not an option. Vidyo has been consistent, agnostic and user-friendly across an array of different devices, web browsers and operating systems, which has helped thousands of the nonprofit’s non-technical volunteers confidently set up and run their own video sessions, without the need for an administrator or having to be trained on a teleconferencing solution.

High-quality, reliable, flexible video collaboration is helping all kinds of organizations realize significant savings, and use those critical resources to become more agile and nimble. Along with entities such as the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), NASA, the US Army, the Department of Energy and others, we are proud to call the Air Force Association a Vidyo customer, and want to thank all AFA members for their support of the United States Air Force.

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