Forward-Thinking Organizations Improve End-User Experience for Digital Content Delivery While Mitigating Bandwidth Upgrades

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - April 9, 2009) - "Three Things to Follow to Optimize Digital Content Delivery," a new benchmark research report by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), revealed that more than 30% of organizations that participated in Aberdeen's survey increased their deployments of digital content for areas such as communications with customers and prospects, product distribution, information sharing within the organization and revenue generating applications over the last 12 months. The report also shows that as compared to Laggards, Best-in-Class organizations are 58% more likely to reduce the cost of distribution of digital content and are twice as likely to improve the quality of end-user experience.

"Streaming video, transfers of digital files, and software downloads are becoming more business critical within industry sectors that are not traditional users of this type of content," states Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen. "Traditionally, industries such as media and entertainment and retail have been deploying these types of solutions, but Aberdeen's research shows that digital content is increasingly becoming more of a mission critical technology in business-to-employee and business-to-business environments. That is to say that this type of technology allows organizations to not only support their customers and prospects, but also to improve communication with employees, partners, and suppliers."

Aberdeen surveyed 137 end-user organizations and found that 77% of organizations surveyed are using two or more media formats (e.g., Windows Media Player, Adobe Flash Player, Microsoft Silverlight, RealPlayer). The research also shows that Best-in-Class organizations are twice as likely to be using a single platform for managing the delivery of multiple media formats as compared to Laggards. Additionally, the research identified 10 capabilities and technology enablers that are having the most significant impact on performance improvements that Best-in-Class organizations are experiencing.

By deploying these capabilities, Best-in-Class organizations were able to achieve the following:

--  Achieve optimal level of end-user experience while mitigating
    bandwidth upgrades
--  Support different media formats
--  Enable seamless delivery of digital content to end-users regardless of
    their geographic location and bandwidth requirements
    

As a result of having these capabilities in place, Best-in-Class organizations are seven times more likely to reduce buffer times as compared to Laggards and three times more likely to report improvements in user session abandonment rate.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part to the following underwriters: Internap and VBrick. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/summary/report/benchmark/5616-RA-digital-content-delivery.asp.

For additional access to complimentary Information Technology Research, please visit http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/-information-technology.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2009 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Contact Information: Media Contact: Bojan Simic Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5281 bojan.simic@aberdeen.com