An international collaboration among leading ICT and digital media firms is unveiling a "disruptive" new system to profit from the convergence of video, mobile and the Internet with enhanced Over-the-Top (OTT) video services.
The partners' platform is called Connexus; it's been developed to enable service providers, content providers and advertisers to deliver high-quality monetized video to subscribers in a multi-screen mobile and fixed broadband environment.
Connexus is the result of collaboration among U.S., U.K, and Canadian companies such as Spirent Communications, BroadHop, CommProve and Avvasi.
The founding partners believe that mobile and fixed broadband service providers can enhance their service delivery architecture and increase relevance and revenue in the OTT value chain.
OTT video streaming from sites such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and BBC iPlayer accounts for over 50% of Internet traffic, they say. Service providers are already struggling to meet the demand that viewers place on their networks. Media consumption trends show that the number of mobile OTT video consumers is growing by 41%, and the number of viewing hours is growing by 20%.
It's a big opportunity for revenue generation, but because of the currently fragmented value chain, there is a substantial gap between total viewer penetration (10%) and the relative amount spent on advertising in that market (0.5%).
"The growing gap between exponential bandwidth demand and shallow revenue growth is no secret, and OTT video is the primary driver," said Mate Prgin, president and CEO of Avvasi, a privately held company based in Waterloo, ON.
"The Connexus architecture seeks to address this issue by bringing together vendors committed to an open architecture for video service delivery. Reliable, high-quality video traffic management is the first step to QoE-differentiated subscription revenue which sets the stage for content monetization and, ultimately, ad revenue."
Prior to Avvasi, Prgin held several business management roles at LSI Corporation, which acquired VideoLocus, an H.264 fabless semiconductor company where he was the co-founder and CEO. Prior to VideoLocus, he held engineering roles at PixStream, a video networking systems company acquired by Cisco Systems. Prgin has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from Richard Ivey School of Business.
The partners say Connexus platform takes aim at three primary goals:
1. Promoting the notion that service providers need to monetize OTT video and deliver a high quality of experience in order to fund the infrastructure capacity that will meet subscriber demand
2. Leveraging existing standards and associations to define how OTT video is delivered and monetized, and facilitate interoperability within the ecosystem
3. Accelerating the availability of integrated best of breed solutions across the OTT video ecosystem.
Connexus is described as "a disruptive architecture", one that supports collaboration among vendors, service providers, content providers and advertisers so that they can maximize subscriber quality of experience, and delivering new video services and therefore new revenue streams for the entire ecosystem.
Connexus has also recently introduced an on- demand cloud based product for service providers, one that used the Vidyo video to deliver high-definition videoconferencing products and services. Vidyo products and services can work on desktop or laptop computers, tablets and smart phones and travel over the Internet or 3G and 4G cellular networks.
Connexus-on-Demand allows audio, video and unified communications service providers and resellers to market and sell Vidyo desktop videoconferencing and collaboration capabilities with access to all networks and devices; Vidyo to ISDN, traditional H.323, iPhone and iPad without purchasing any capital equipment.
Connexus-on-Demand technology leverages and combines the Vidyo platform with proprietary and highly tuned applications software that allows service providers and resellers to easily configure and create very low usage based pricing for end users, the partnership describes, with pricing that starts at $10.00 per month retail.
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