Microsoft, Ooyala partner for personalised TV
March 31, 2014
Personalised video experience specialist Ooyala has agreed a strategic relationship with Microsoft to help develop, promote and accelerate the deployment of next-generation IP video services utilising Microsoft Azure Media Services (Media Services) in conjunction with Ooyala’s SaaS-based video distribution, analytics and monetisation technology. Ooyala also formed a global sales and marketing alliance with Microsoft, which is designed to drive standardisation of new personalised TV services for broadcasters and operators around the world.
The partnership sees Ooyala become a preferred online video provider for Microsoft and Microsoft becomes Ooyala’s preferred public cloud provider. The pair say that with the massive scale of their 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 utilising the full complement of Microsoft and Ooyala tools and services. They suggest that 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 monetisation 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 standardisation of the next generation of personalised, 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 four 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.
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 maximise 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.