Friday, October 9, 2009

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.