AMSTERDAM--Verizon Digital Media Services is adding its own product to the rising tide of live streaming offerings coming onto the market, announcing the aptly named Live Streaming Solution here at IBC 2016 along with several enhancements to its portfolio meant to ensure better integration of the new solution.
VDMS had the new solution in beta mode for the past several months with “several major broadcaster customers,” and it has been used for a range of audience sizes, from small groups to over a million concurrent viewers.
Similar to the live streaming product Ericsson recently released for its IPTV and broadcaster customers, VDMS’ Live Streaming Solution is intended to simplify streaming of live events at scale. The feature publishes a single URL for a live stream that transitions between pre-event, live and post-event states; it also automatically creates a video on demand (VOD) version as soon as the live event is completed, without needing to be re-encoded.
Customers can also outsource their operations on the day of the event to VDMS’ live events staff.
Ralf Jacob, newly promoted president of VDMS, said its live streaming product is based on “key learnings” the company has gained from delivering livestreamed events, which enabled them to make improvements to their existing portfolio and add this new solution.
For example, VDMS’ Uplynk Video Streaming service got a workflow upgrade to accommodate the new live streaming product, giving operations staff a dashboard and cloud-based scheduler so they can manage live feeds.
VDMS also supports the solution, along with related products like Uplynk, with Network Operations Centers (NOCs) in Los Angeles and Ashburn, Virginia. There, they can monitor a stream’s health and provide failover support all the way back to the application running on-site or at a point of origination. That’s much like Akamai’s BOCC (Broadcast Operations Control Center) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the CDN provider monitored the health of NBC’s live stream of the Olympic Games.
Additionally, VDMS said it is continuing to expand its Edgecast CDN, adding points of presence (POPs) in South America, India and Asia.
Verizon Digital Media Services has been bulking up its OTT transitional features for broadcasters over the past several months. In March, the provider acquired Volicon, a video capture and archiving vendor, for an undisclosed amount – an addition that enabled VDMS to offer a service that seamlessly transitions broadcast feeds and channels to cloud-based, over-the-top delivery.
FierceOnlineVideo will be speaking with VDMS during the show and will have more insight into the vendor’s strategy and services in the coming days.
Related articles:
OTT vendors Ooyala, Ericsson jostle to add turnkey services, but market is getting crowded
Ericsson puts IP video products into shiny new package dubbed ‘TV as a service’
Verizon Digital Media Services replaces departed president Toohey with CRO Jacob
Verizon moves Go90 onto Verizon Digital Media Services to fix early technical issues
Verizon Digital Media Services buys Volicon to boost broadcast-to-OTT offering