Advanced Television

KIT digital consolidates IP video market

January 31, 2011

By Colin Mann

KIT digital, the provider of cloud-based video asset management solutions for multi-screen delivery, has made three separate acquisitions aimed consolidating the IP video market and creating a truly ‘Lens-to- Lens’ video offering. The deals involve New York City-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte, for aggregate consideration of approximately $77.2 million.

“These strategic acquisitions complement and enhance our existing product offering while growing our market share across geographies and client verticals,” said KIT digital’s chairman and CEO, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman. “We are committed to ensuring that our ‘VX-one’ video management platform has market-leading functionality that helps clients realise value across the video distribution value chain, from securing and capturing the right content to delivering it across multiple channels and via social communities. We are intent on becoming the one-stop shop for medium and large-sized corporations’ video needs, delivering IP video management services from the eyes behind the camera shooting the video to the person watching it on any device—from ‘lens-to-lens’.”

In conjunction with these acquisitions, the CEO of KickApps, Alex Blum, has been appointed to the new position of chief operating officer of KIT digital. Blum was an early pioneer of online video and interactive TV as vice president of products at AOL, and is noted for championing linear broadcast Internet TV as president and COO of JumpTV. Blum said he believed the combined product offering of these acquisitions would allow KIT digital to leapfrog pure-play OVPs [Open Video Players] and enterprise social software companies, and enter a new era of socially-enabled video.

KickApps’ solutions enable the creation and management of next generation video-based Web experiences, while Kewego provides enterprises, media operators, and communication agencies with professional IP-based, multi-screen video asset management solutions for managing, broadcasting and monetising videos on IP connected devices, including PCs, mobile phones, iPads, connected TVs, and gaming consoles. Kyte‘s cloud-based publishing platform enables companies to deliver live and on-demand video experiences to websites, mobile devices and connected TVs.

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