Ortiva Wireless Launches Content Delivery Network For Mobile Video

I follow the content delivery market for video probably closer than any other facet of this space because it's how I got started in the industry and I really enjoy how fast the CDN market changes.

While most CDNs are talking about and working on the delivery of video over the Internet, Ortiva Wireless has a taken a different approach and has built out a CDN specific to the delivery of only mobile video. I recently completed a survey of content owners and current CDNs and found out that most CDNs have no offering for mobile delivery or have one that is very limited. The reason for this is simple. Mobile delivery in the U.S. is not yet a real business. Traditional CDNs can't spend a lot of time and money to invest in mobile delivery if they can't get near-immediate revenue. But for a company like Ortiva Wireless, they have the potential to create some real revenue based on the fact that it's all they specialize in. Content owners I spoke to, both large and small, found that mobile delivery over traditional CDNs was complex, expensive and confusing. Delivery of video for mobile is not easy from a technical perspective as delivering videos to PCs is.

I first met the executive team from Ortiva Wireless at the Streaming Media West show at the end of last year. I heard their pitch and liked their technology and the fact that they are focused on offering a single product and service. They know what content owners want for mobile video delivery and have confidence about the business they can build over the coming years as mobile video starts to get adopted. Yes, there are some big potential hurdles that mobile delivery in the U.S. has to overcome, but at some point in time, video to mobile will become a real business and Ortiva Wireless is looking to lay the groundwork now to be a major player when it hits.

Why Are Bloggers Not Easier To Contact?

Since I started this blog two weeks ago, I have received a lot of calls and e-mails from people based on my contact info I have on the site. People are always amazed when they get a response to their e-mail or actually have a number to call when they have a question. I know what they mean.

I have contacted a lot of bloggers before who are running business blogs, blogs they are making money from, blogs where their sole business is blogging, and many times you never get any response from them. Too many times they either don't have contact info on their website, they don't return e-mails or more often than you would believe, don't even have an e-mail address listed on their blog. And when was the last time you saw a phone number on a bloggers website?

There are over 58 million blogs on the Internet today and only a small percentage of those are business blogs with real traffic. You would think all bloggers would want to build a good, lasting relationship with their readers and stand out from the crowd. With all the blogs out there, readers have a choice. Are they going to  visit a blog that helps them when they have a question or one that simply wants to dish out news and comments without giving anything back? This does not apply to all bloggers, some are great with communication, but as I have seen first-hand, way too many aren't. 

My Prediction, Brightcove and blinkx Will Get Acquired This Year

I don't like making predictions. In fact, I stay away from them whenever possible as too many predictions made are done just for headlines. But in this case, I think blinkx is really the only vendor in its vertical niche who has a product that works far superior than anyone else. They also have great momentum in the market, some smart folks at the company and based on their recent profile in the New York Times, they clearly know their strengths and more importantly their weaknesses. In my eyes, they have a lot of options for being acquired by a large portal or even from a large content creator who wants their search technology. While their founder and CTO Suranga Chandratillake told me that they are "making money" that does not really mean anything without numbers. He said "we don't comment on how much (revenue) or how close to break-even". So not knowing how much real revenue they are doing and what their burn rate is it would be hard to say what their evaluation would be. So far, blinkx has raised about $12M and with a small head count under 30 they are probably not burning that much cash. My guess is that they are still an affordable acquisition.

As for Brightcove, they are a bit different as they have a lot of competitors in their vertical niche, but so far, no one has really stepped up with a technology offering that seems to be actively competing with them. There are some who have competitive offerings for pieces of what Brightcove offers but not really for the entire solution. We know they have a lot of cash and can burn through it for some time with no worries and they continue to expand their market and customer list. There is no guarantee that even with the exposure they are getting that they will make money from their current business model or how long that may take them but I see them as being an acquisition soon from a large portal and media play who wants to speed their time to market.

While any company can always be acquired, who do you feel are the ones that have the best shot at being purchased this year?

 

Former VP of Broadcast & Streaming Media for JPMorganChase For Hire

If you are looking to hire someone who has hands-on experience with the entire webcasting workflow process, Nico Mclane is someone you should talk to. Until last week, Nico was the VP of Broadcast and Streaming Media for JPMorganChase. Over the past seven years at JPMorganChase, she helped build, deploy and manage their internal webcasting solution including the hardware, software, distribution, A/V production, web developers etc...saving the company an estimated $3M is communication costs in 2006.

I have known Nico for many years and would vouch for her experience in the webcasting market. If you are looking for someone with her expertise, contact her directly.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog - free of charge.

Reporting Tools Lacking For Companies That Delivery Videos Online

I speak to a lot of companies that do their own hosting and delivery for video content, be it downloads or streaming, live or on-demand. Many of them are enterprise organizations who have found it makes more sense for them to distribute their own content across their private networks because it is cheaper, gives them more control of their content and gives them additional flexibility. In addition to Fortune 1000 corporations, there are also a lot of smaller content owners and publishers who have a few servers setup to stream audio and video.

With all those servers in the market, to date there is still not a single good software package that you can buy off the shelf that will parse your raw logs and give you the kind of data you need from the logs. I'm talking about a software package that is setup just to parse raw logs for streaming and not something like WebTrends which was not built for video and does not work well for streaming. Back in the 2000 era you had a reporting product made by Lariat, which was then bought by EnScaler, which then went out of business at least 5 years ago.

In that time, there have been no other solutions on the market. Yes, there are a lot of third party tools out there, many of them free like FunnelWeb, Sawmill etc... but they all have many limitations, especially when it comes to large log files. So my question is this. Why has no software company created a package that is specific to a particular hosting platform? The demand is there. I hear from companies all the time who say they would pay $1,000 for a software package like this. Just think of how many companies are out there in the enterprise with Windows Media servers, that market alone is huge. And right now, they all try to do it themselves, write their own software, or use a third party tool that does not give them what they want.

Why has no one jumped all over this and developed a solution? Once you develop the product, the only overhead you have is support and upgrades and you could easily have a consulting side to the business that builds something specific for a customer. Why is no software company addressing this need in the market when there is such a demand and it's not complex or expensive to do?

Someone somewhere needs to built this product and I want to work with them to do it. A product like this would go a long way to helping our industry as a whole.

 

Why Does The NAB Show Have No Sessions About Online Video?

With all that is going on with the current broadcast industry and all of the online video initiatives that broadcasters have under way, I still can't figure out why for the second year in a row the NAB has nothing in the way of conference sessions talking to the online video market for broadcasters. Where are the sessions talking about the new emerging business models? Where are the sessions talking about the technology and work flow issues these broadcasters are having, let alone the reporting and metrics issues that come with this new online distribution business?

Why isn't the NAB at the forefront of wanting to educate its broadcasters in a public forum? The RTNDA@NAB conference has some sessions about online but primarily all about the radio and news industries. Nothing about video distribution channels, technology, or business models in the entertainment and broadcast industries.

UGC Site Viddler Looking To Raise $1M in First Round of Financing

Viddler, another UGC site that launched at the end of last year is now out looking for its first round of financing between $1-2 million. Viddler classifies themselves as an interactive online video platform that allows people to enhance and share video inside of the browser.

I spoke to Viddler's president Rob Sandie yesterday who gave me an update on their technology and business model. Of course, the first thing I had to ask was how they plan on making any money and how they are any different that all the other UGC sites out there. Rob explained that they want to be the Flickr of web video allowing users to upload long form content, provide the tools for them to be able to edit the video and then allow the user to be able to buy a DVD of their video. I don't know if there is a large enough market for that but I don't recall any other UGC sites trying to do this. Selling DVDs is not the only business model they are focusing on but rather taking the approach of creating revenue from advertising, subscriptions to their video platform and the DVDs.

On the investment subject, I hear from a lot of companies all the time who are actively looking to raise a round of financing, but then always tell me I can't tell anyone they are looking? Usually they say they don't want their competitors to know. How do you expect to raise the money if you don't get word out in the community that you are looking? And so what if your competitors know, that should have no affect on your business.

Kudos to Rob for saying he wants to get the word and out wants everyone to know that they are looking for financing. I'm happy to let any company looking for money to use my blog to get the word out. That's the whole point of a blog, networking with your peers.

Expensive Bandwidth Means Joost TV Is Anything But Free

I didn't post anything on the Joost Viacom announcement last week because quite frankly, I don't really see it as news. While a deal was announced, Joost has not yet launched out of beta and no Viacom content is yet available to the public. While I am closely watching to see what happens, to me, no deal is real until the content is available, especially when a product is still in beta. In addition, there are plenty of other sites out there that gave their thoughts on the deal.

That being said, I came across an interesting article on itwire.com.au website this weekend. Alex Zaharov-Reutt writes in detail about how If you have restrictive bandwidth caps on your broadband connection, Joost TV is anything but free. It's an interesting read and one that looks at the Joost content distribution from a different angle.

The article is entitled "Joost Viacom warning: expensive bandwidth means IPTV not free" and you should head over to the iTWire site to read it.

A Brief Guide to Online Video Lawsuits

I was going to write an in-depth post about all of the lawsuits taking place surrounding major video sharing sites, but Steve Bryant over at reelpopblog.com already beat me to it with a post entitled "A Brief Guide to Online Video Lawsuits". He gives details on lawsuits and subpoenas against Veoh, Bolt, Grouper, YouTube, Google Video and MySpace. Head on over to his site to read it.

Steve will be moderating a panel at the Streaming Media East show in May about "User-Generated Content Tools".

Video Journalism on the Web: Where is it Going?

With all that is going on in the online video news space, I am pleased to announce that Martin Nisenholtz, Sr. VP of Digital Operations for The New York Times Company will be the keynote presenter on the first day of the Streaming Media East show.

Martin's keynote will be talking to how video factors into the historic transformation taking place at The New York Times, and what online video means for the future of journalism.

All keynote presentations are free to attend. Sign up for a free exhibit pass and your in.