Vanguard Video, an HEVC and H.264 video encoding provider with customers like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Imagine Communications and other major OTT service providers, has been acquired by Beamr, a media optimization vendor, for an undisclosed amount.
The deal comes on the heels of a successful $15 million fundraising round by Beamr led by Disruptive Growth.
Beamr's purchase illustrates the ongoing consolidation of the OTT video services industry -- last year, IBM purchased Harmonic, Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) purchased Elemental, and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) bought Envivio -- but it's also a key strategy move for Beamr, a Fierce 15 selectee that was founded in 2009 and brought its signature compression product to market in fall 2013.
By wrapping Vanguard into its services portfolio, Beamr can offer customers both its own compression technology -- one which it says can reduce the size of files by as much as 50 percent -- and Vanguard's 4K-friendly encoding solutions.
"The Beamr quality measure operates in a closed loop; meaning artifacts are never introduced during the optimization process," said analyst Dan Rayburn of Streaming Media in a post about the acquisition. "This approach represents the purest form of content adaptive optimization, which is getting a lot of attention these days from Netflix, YouTube and others who are breaking away from preset recipes to follow a content adaptive methodology."
Vanguard and Beamr's combined operations will give both companies a deeper global presence as well. The acquisition boosts the total number of employees to 80, located in offices in the U.S., Russia and Israel.
As wireless operators tackle the capacity challenge around over-the-top mobile streaming, and as 4K-quality video demand begins to rise, the opportunity for Beamr to provide a more holistic compression and optimization solution to major providers could be huge.
For more:
- see the press release
- see this Streaming Media post
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IBM, Harmonic join consolidation frenzy with Clearleap, Thomson Video Networks acquisition moves
Ericsson acquires Envivio for $125M, partners with AT&T on DirecTV tech transition
Amazon Web Services snaps up multiscreen service provider Elemental Technologies
Beamr - compression and encoding - online video startups - Fierce 15 2015