Content and service providers seeking scale from the cloud

Smaller-scale video service providers and content providers are increasingly looking to the cloud to provide shared facilities that can enable them to launch services more economically, according to an industry panel at the ANGA COM event in Cologne.

IP video platform operators require scale to deliver their services and a shared multi-tenancy private cloud-based platform is best placed to deliver this, according to Gernot Jaeger (left), chief officer, B2B solutions at Zattoo.

Jaeger said that the TV-as-a-service platform provided by his company delivered scale through the sharing of cloud resources among various operators.

He said that operators today typically were still deploying their own set-top boxes but are complementing this by offering their services via apps to other devices, such as Swiss telco Salt’s use of Apple TV boxes and other service providers deploying their services to Roku devices.

Steve Oetegenn, president of Verimatrix, also speaking at the ANGA COM event, said that his company was working with content owners to provide a ‘content market place’ to enable operators to tap into “a vast array of content” that is encrypted and can be delivered on-demand to different players.

“The cloud provides this kind of scalability,” he said. “Content owners can now reach consumers directly or they can reach service providers that want to reach that same base.”

Oetegenn said that operators could also use the cloud to provide resources on-demand for IP coverage of live events such as the World Cup. In addition to the benefit of shared resources, using the cloud can also provide a wealth of data to enable operators to shape their services in line with patterns of consumer demand, he added. He said that the cloud was now capable of delivering services more efficiently and the vendor community was “ well-prepared” for the shift.

Oliver Soellner, ABOX42, said that intelligence is moving to the cloud, but added that consumer premises devices were also becoming more sophisticated. The software stack and capability of the platform is becoming mroe rather than less important, he said. “That is the challenge for the set-top suppliers. Services are moving to the cloud but there is a need to manage the service through its lifecycle. Cloud services are designed to change over time, unlike with DVB-C.”