DENVER — Looking to lower the technical and operational barriers required for multiscreen video services, Vubiquity and Akamai Technologies have struck an integration and sales agreement that will pursue traditional providers as well as players that deliver services over-the-top.
The resulting service will support on-demand and live TV for set-tops, tablets, PCs, smartphones and other connected devices, covering elements such as content licensing, metadata and rights management, and content preparation, packaging and delivery.
“There’s a ton of complexity … in that content supply chain,” Anupam Gupta, Vubiquity’s executive vice president of cloud services, said, addng he hopes the turnkey approach will ease the pain and eliminate the need for service providers to tie together a patchwork of one-off products.
“It’s expensive to buy and maintain these multiscreen services,” Frank Childs, director of product marketing for carrier product at Akamai, added. “A lot of this can be serviced in the cloud and [achieve] scale instantly.”
The deal’s joint-sales component follows an integration pact announced earlier this year that will team Vubiquity’s new AnyVU Cloud platform with Akamai’s content delivery network (CDN).
But they aren’t the only ones pitching the notion of an allin- one, turnkey approach. Others include Verizon Digital Media Services, the cloud video unit of Verizon Communications that has its own CDN (via Verizon’s acquisition of EdgeCast Networks earlier this year), and recently enhanced its multiscreen video publishing capabilities after forging an alliance with Comcast-owned thePlatform.
