Harmonic: Well-placed for OTT boom
September 15, 2017
Colin Mann @ IBC
Video delivery technology and services specialist Harmonic has declared itself well- placed to work with its broadcaster customers seeking to offer OTT services in addition to their linear services.
Outlining the company’s product and service launches at a pre-IBC briefing, Andy Warman, Director of Market Development, suggested that Harmonic was leading the OTT charge, in a growing market. “It certainly has moved to centre stage as a market that is increasingly important to service providers. There’s something in the region of 20,00 channels deployed globally. Possibly more significantly is that in the past year, we’ve seen growth of over 400 per cent in OTT-based revenue. This underscores how our customers are preparing to deliver those OTT services that the market wants and expects.”
According to Warman, the OTT market was going through a radical transformation. “The things that are driving this is not just delivery of movies and content on demand, but more dynamic functionality, being able to deliver live services, making it possible to have sports production and other services that have more interactivity working in a cloud environment,” he noted.
“Behind the scenes, we have new formats that come along that improve the viewership experience of the consumer, delivering new services that enable the functionality that consumers are looking for, whether that’s time shifting, or live sports; even driving UHD SVoD functionality.”
“The global OTT video market is experiencing explosive growth, according to Digital TV Research, with revenues expected to reach $64.8 billion by 2021. The latest enhancements to Harmonic’s VOS cloud-native solutions allow video content and service providers to capitalise on those revenue opportunities,” said Bart Spriester, senior vice president, video products at Harmonic
According to Spriester, by enhancing the capabilities of OTT workflows, from acquisition to delivery, Harmonic was enabling better video experiences for consumers and accelerating the time to market for new must-have services.