Ooyala Goes Live, Releases Live Streaming With Real-Time Analytics

In response to the growing demand of online video publishers to incorporate the power of live streaming into their offerings, Ooyala has released Live Streaming with Real-time Analytics as a native feature of their Backlot publishing platform. This new functionality is immediately available to customers with Studio accounts (an add on for Director accounts) and offers a quick and easy way to set up a live stream from the same console that they manage their on-demand content. Customers like Electronic Arts, the AVP, Arsenal and Planet Streams Ltd. are already using the service.

All the same features within Backlot used to manage video on-demand content, such as advanced syndication controls, player branding, video search, analytics, adaptive bit-rate and monetization are all supported by the new live streaming offering. Ooyala is using Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) 3.5 to capture and encode the live streams and Akamai Technologies Inc. for content delivery. Ryan Lawler noted on Contentinople, that Ooyala went exclusive with Akamai months ago migrating the vast majority of its video delivery to the CDN for better overall performance.

While it's not available right now, Ooyala will be rolling out adaptive bit-rate streaming or dynamic streaming in the coming weeks, a key feature of Adobe FMS 3.5 for managing the live streaming user experience. Akamai announced support dynamic streaming and other key enhancements to its Flash streaming capabilities earlier this year. Dynamic streaming is a new feature in Adobe FMS 3.5 that seamlessly switches between different quality versions of a single video stream based on available bandwidth to deliver the optimal viewing experience.

According to Ooyala, you don't need a budget in the tens of millions of dollars to go live and this new offering gives publishers the same tools as that of big media companies. Pricing for the service will be at the same cost as the on-demand content packages.

This is the second launch for the company this week and follows the recent announcement that their platform is powering automobile video reviews (provided by WheelsTV) on the eBay Motors website and is great example of online video for eCommerce. Ooyala expects to make several more exciting company, customer and product announcements before year's end.

Next month at the Online Video Platform Summit, Ooyala will be showcasing their technology as part of the Online Video Platform Showcase and Bismarck Lepe, Co-founder and President of Product & Marketing, will be a featured speaker on the opening panel session, Defining Online Video Platforms. Additionally, Streaming Media West will feature a panel session on, Understanding Adaptive Bitrate Technology and HTTP Video Delivery, which will explore how this technology is impacting platform providers and content owners, their content offerings and plans and real impact to their users. Finally, you can also read Jan Ozer's article, Streaming Gets Smarter: Evaluating the Adaptive Streaming Technologies.

About Ooyala Inc.

Ooyala is a video technology company that provides a comprehensive software platform enabling the delivery, management, and monetization of high quality online video content. Its innovative analytics engine and monetization server allow video content owners to drive revenue by maximizing the value of their content. Ooyala has over 500 customers, including 150 global media and enterprise customers such as Warner Brothers, Wenner Media, Fremantle, Armani, Sybase and Electronic Arts.

For more information visit www.ooyala.com.

Delve Networks and Akamai Partner to Deliver Cloud-based Online Video Publishing

It was more than a year ago that Seattle, Washington-based Delve Networks changed its name from Pluggd and business focus from podcasting tools to online video publishing tools for content publishers looking to create their own branded video experience. Like many others in the saturated online video platform market Delve offers an intuitive end-to-end solution to manage, deliver, publish and measure viewership. Earlier this month launched a self-service option for their video publishing platform. Delve’s video platform includes patented semantic video technology which extracts information from within the video to provide enhanced search, meta-data tagging, and indexing capabilities.

On Friday, Delve Networks announced a strategic relationship with Akamai, the leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) that Delve says is aimed at challenging Brightcove as the leader in the online video platform space, "to give publishers a better alternative than Brightcove’s." The collaboration between Delve and Akamai offers Delve's customers a complete video management solution to deliver HD-quality video on Akamai’s global video delivery network which supports both Adobe’s dynamic streaming and Microsoft’s Silverlight Smooth Streaming technologies. Financial details of the collaboration were not disclosed.

In an interview with Beet.TV, Delve Networks VP of Product Management Edgardo Nazario says that there is great synergy between the two companies and that they "will work together on projects and also pitch each other's customers."



Delve Networks CEO Alex Castro had this to say about the collaboration with Akamai:

"Our joint effort will help us reach many more customers than we could reach alone. Increasingly we are looking for leading partners who can help us provide the best in video management and solutions for our customers. We can think of no one better than Akamai to work with.”

Akamai has similar partnerships with KickApps, VMIX, Multicast, Onstream Media, VBrick, KIT Digital and Ooyala and while this deal is not much different from existing relationships with the other companies and Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media at Akamai said:

"A fast, efficient media distribution workflow based on industry standards is critical to any successful online business. Akamai's mission is to support innovation and leadership in this space and Delve clearly offers an impactful solution. Providing unique and innovative capabilities, such as a cloud-based architecture and search inside, Delve's video platform is not only technologically advanced, but also easy to use."

In an interview with Pete Wylie this past week Alex Castro described Delve's performance this year and his vision for the future of the company in growth in 2009. "We've tripled our customer base since beginning of the year and launched our self-service product, we've signed some important big name customers and we're waiting on timing to talk about those partnerships," said Castro. Delve, which raised a $1.6 million venture round in May and snce launching 10 months ago, Delve Networks has signed up over 70 customers including Standard & Poors, 1800Flowers, the Kansas City Chiefs, and many others.

While this all sounds like good news it actually hasn't been a good week for Akamai. The comoany has come under scrutiny by Wall Street just this week following a disappointing earnings call by missing analyst expectations and saw shares drop 15% quarter due to a risky strategy of sacrificing revenue growth to hold on to customers. Dan Rayburn also pointed out that despite their pricing problems, Akamai is still not doing enough to grow their CDN business.

Within the online video ecosystem this deal could be viewed as another example of the CDN becoming a commodity. With the rise of online video platforms over the last few years the direct line consumers have to CDNs has been blurred as OVPs offer scalable plans, extensible modules and content delivery solutions. For more on this topic see the LinkedIn discussion: Is control going from CDNs to OVPs ?

Delve Networks is also a platinum sponsor of the Online Video Platform Summit and will be showcasing its platform and technology at the event. For more information on Delve Networks and a free trial, visit www.delvenetworks.com.

About Akamai

Akamai(R) provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries. The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

About Delve Networks

Founded in 2006, Seattle-based Delve Networks makes it possible for organizations of any size across any industry to realize the potential of online video. Delve's advanced, easy-to-use and highly customizable online video platform offers all the tools necessary for publishing video online including video hosting, encoding, content delivery, content management, semantic search, metrics, advertising and syndication. By leveraging the power of cloud computing, Delve gives its customers the ability to quickly adapt as demand for content increases allowing for greater overall scalability, efficiency and reliability. Delve is backed by DFJ Frontier, Intel Capital and Labrador Ventures.

Related:

• Edgardo / Delve Networks Blog: Delve Networks and Akamai Collaborate to Enable Cloud-Based Video Management for Publishers
• Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee: Everybody Wants to Be Akamai's Friend; Delve the Latest
• John Cook / TechFlash: Delve and Akamai link arms in shot across Brightcove's bow
• Daisy Whitney / Beet.TV: Delve, Akamai Announce Collaboration
• Brier Dudley / The Seattle Times: Seattle video startup Delve partners with Akamai
• Eric Hal Schwartz / Xconomy: Delve Partners With Akamai
• Ryan Lawler /Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - Delve Sides With Akamai

Updated: 8/3/09

Streaming Media East: Live Broadcasts and HD Video - Can Web Video Ever Scale to TV-Sized Audiences?

In this video from Streaming Media East, Dan Rayburn moderates a panel discussion on live broadcasting in HD which as he notes has come a long way in the past 13 years when he first got into the streaming media business co-founding a live webcasting company. The panel discusses the scalability of HD content and the comparison of Internet video to broadcast TV, which is a great segue from Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai who believes that online video is at a "tipping point" where it can finally compete with traditional broadcast TV. Is it a fair comparison? Will online video replace the broadcast TV or will they complement each other? 

Live Broadcasts and HD Video: Can Web Video Ever Scale to TV-Sized Audiences?

(B203)   1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Last year we saw a big uptick in the number of high-profile, large-scale live events on the web. Most weren’t offered in HD, and the debate still remains whether the internet is even capable of supporting live events with the kind of traffic seen from TV broadcasts. We’ll explore this discussion from all angles—technology, infrastructure, and quality—to get a feel for what the barriers are and when we can expect to see more large-scale live events delivered in HD.

Moderator:	Dan Rayburn, Executive Vice President, StreamingMedia.com
Panel:	Mark Taylor, VP, CMG Product and Strategy, Level 3 John Edwards, CEO, Move Networks Joe Inzerillo, SVP, MLB.com Tony Fernandez, VP, Technology, CBSSports.com

Streaming Media East Keynote: Paul Sagan, Akamai, "HD Online @ the Tipping Point"

This video features Paul Sagan, President and CEO of Akamai from his keynote at Streaming Media East last month. In his presentation, HD Online @ the Tipping Point, Sagan said that after more than 10 years of the evolution of online video delivery it's finally reached a "tipping point" where it can compete directly with traditional broadcast television. He traced the milestones of online video from the 1999 Victoria Secret Fashion Show to the present with the 2009 Presidential Inauguration (10 million streams) and NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament MMOD (March on March Madness) and pointed to the growth of HD and high quality video and adaptive streaming technology as key factors in the "tipping point" that will enable Internet video to reach a TV sized audience.

"We're on the cusp of many new businesses starting up," said Sagan, "and what the early days of broadband taught us is that, once consumers have access to fast bandwidth, that level of speed becomes the standard by which they judge all future online broadband experiences. Given full-motion video, gaming, and other high-quality online entertainment experiences, consumers will push every previous entertainment tool off the table and focus on consuming broadband-delivered content." 

Related:

• See Contentinople - Akamai CEO: Online Video Has Reached a 'Tipping Point' for Ryan Lawler's write up on the Paul Sagan's keynote: 
  
• Also, see Online Video Watch for analysis on Sagan's keynote
  
• Streamingmedia.com: HD Online at the Tipping Point
  
• Online Video Publishing [dot] com: Ad Age: Akamai CEO: The Online-Video Tipping Point is Here, Streaming Media East 2009 Keynote
  
• Download Paul  Sagan's slides from Streamingmedia.com: Streaming Media East Keynote: Paul Sagan, Akamai http://www.streamingmedia.com/east/presentations/SMEast09-Keynote-Akamai.pdf