Ooyala today announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft Corp. to help develop, promote and accelerate the deployment of next-generation IP video services utilizing Microsoft Azure Media Services (Media Services) in conjunction with Ooyala’s SaaS-based video distribution, analytics and monetization technology. Ooyala also formed a global sales and marketing alliance with Microsoft, which is designed to drive standardization of new personalized TV services for broadcasters and operators around the world.
Through this partnership, Ooyala becomes a preferred online video provider for Microsoft and Microsoft becomes Ooyala’s preferred public cloud provider. With the massive scale of its combined technologies, customers of any size can build and deploy hybrid systems integrated with existing video infrastructures, as well as end-to-end digital video workflows utilizing the full complement of Microsoft and Ooyala tools and services. With Ooyala and Media Services, customers are able to solve for the challenges of multi-screen services efficiently and reliably.
“Through our partnership with Ooyala, we can offer fully integrated comprehensive managed TV and video services to our customers, and we’ll work together to aggressively drive adoption among broadcasters and operators everywhere,” said Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure. “Ooyala’s reputation for superior workflows, world-class consumer experiences, viewer analytics and monetization services enhances our platform’s offerings and strengthens our ability to offer live and on-demand streaming services.”
“Through this alliance, Microsoft and Ooyala are in a position to seize a major opportunity together, to drive standardization of the next generation of personalized, IP-delivered video offerings, based on our combined solutions,” said Sean Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer of Ooyala. “With the robust global footprint of our respective platforms, and Microsoft’s massive global workforce for sales, marketing and support, we’re now in a prime position to meet the booming demand for world-class, highly scalable multi-screen TV.”
The collaboration brings together Microsoft’s proven Media Services solution, which recently supported massive online viewership to a global audience of 22 countries on 4 continents for the 2014 Olympic Games, with Ooyala’s data-driven video delivery and analytics technology, which is deployed by top publishers, broadcasters and operators in more than 130 countries worldwide.
Those companies include ESPN and Univision in the United States, CNN Expansion and Medio Tiempo in Mexico, Caracol, Columbia’s number one broadcaster, as well as Telstra, the largest telecommunications provider in Australia. Ooyala’s platform was also deployed in support of the new Australian streaming movie service Presto.
“Multiscreen video delivery is now mandatory for video content owners and distributors; yet the learning curve is steep and will challenge IT departments and even digital media teams. The worldwide multiscreen business opportunity for new services grows from 5% to 11% of the total video market in the next 5 years, ignoring the value of multiscreen to existing services. Bringing the analytics and monetization expertise of Ooyala with the scale and reliability of Media Services creates a more complete and scalable offering to serve Tier 1 Media & Entertainment companies,” according to Sam Rosen, Practice Director at ABI Research.
Customers of the integrated system can take advantage of Media Services’ ingest capabilities, live and video on-demand transcoding, dynamic content repackaging, content protection and industry-leading SLA’s. Additionally, customers can maximize engagement and revenue across all device platforms using Ooyala’s robust multi-screen experiences, TV-quality playback and big data analytics that drive audience insights as well as content search, recommendations and discovery.
