Exclusives

By Chris Tribbey

The Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) asked its members attending the NAB Show to highlight what they offered at the annual confab. This is the final installment of three stories sharing their responses.

Just before the NAB Show kicked off, enterprise information management specialist OpenText announced broad availability of the latest version of its comprehensive, integrated digital information platform, OpenText Release 16. But it was during the show the company made a major acquisition announcement that caught everyone’s attention.

OpenText Release 16 manages to combine end-to-end analytics and information management in a single platform (deployed on premises, in the cloud, or a combination of the two) that can manage and analyze an entire flow of info, tackling key areas of the user experience, machine-to-machine integration and automation.

“In a digital world, the winners will be the ones who find new customers, discover new markets, and pursue new revenue streams using digital channels. These will be the digital leaders, and they will have the competitive advantage,” said OpenText CEO and CTO Mark Barrenechea, said in a statement. “With OpenText Release 16, we offer the only integrated EIM platform essential to becoming an information company, and in the digital world we are all Information Companies.”

But it was during the show that OpenText made its big announcement: it has signed a deal to acquire a host of customer experience software and services assets from Hewlett Packard (HP), including HP TeamSite, a multi-channel digital experience management platform for web content management; HP MediaBin, a digital asset management solution; HP Qfiniti, a workforce optimization solution; along with HP Explore, HP Aurasma, and HP Optimost.

The overall purchase price was approximately $170 million, and OpenText expects the acquisitions to help compliment its own software portfolio, especially its customer experience management and cloud offerings.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

The joint solutions from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Imagine Communications, announced earlier this year, were on full display at the NAB Show, and were highlighted to MESA quickly by HPE’s David Sliter (VP and GM of communications and media solutions) and Rashmi Misra (worldwide GM of media and entertainment communications and media solutions).

The pairing has HPE reselling Imagine’s entire product portfolio aligning Imagine Communications’ core products with HPE’s software, hardware and services solutions. The goal: target content distributors, aggregators and broadcasters in all segments of the industry.

“Two of the most influential technology innovators in their respective industries are teaming up to provide service providers, TV networks, broadcasters, new media and enterprise companies with exactly what they need to meet today’s, as well as tomorrow’s, challenges,” said Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine, in a statement. “By combining Imagine Communications’ market-leading video portfolio with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s market-leading storage, compute and networking technology, the two companies are helping to accelerate the transition to IP-based, software-defined virtualized facilities that are the future of the media and entertainment industry.”

Antonio Neri, EVP and GM of HPE’s enterprise group, added: “Media companies and service providers recognize the urgency to modernize operations to meet the needs of a new generation of video consumers and withstand competitive challenges resulting from disruption to traditional supply chains and business models.

“Together, HPE and Imagine Communications intend to bring faster innovation and risk mitigation to customers as they transform from a pre-IP environment to full IP Cloud and from physical to virtualized infrastructures. At the same time, our deep experience allows us to bring communication service providers the most complete end-to-end solutions and services, accelerating time-to-market and monetization of new multiscreen offerings.”

During the NAB Show, HPE also announced it would resell QStar’s archive manager and network migrator software products under their own brand. “The OEM agreement with QStar allows HPE to leverage existing partner technology that fits well with our solutions and enables us to continue developing and supporting our core strengths to grow our customer base,” said Chris Powers, VP of the data center development unit for HPE.

Akamai Technologies

John Bishop, CTO of Akamai’s media business, simply sees too many advantages in OTT over linear to ignore. That’s why it was Akamai’s OTT improvements for video quality and service performance that had the attention of approximately 250 clients and potential clients at the show, Akamai shared with MESA.

Everything from accelerated ingest capabilities (designed to minimize the time live streams take to reach the Akamai CDN from origination) to predictive delivery capabilities (with instant start-up of high-bitrate video with no buffering) to 4K OTT workflows, Akamai’s solutions were up front and center at the show.

That was made even more apparent with the announcement that Akamai was opening a new Broadcast Operations Control Center (BOCC) at its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters, geared directly toward supporting OTT video providers.

The new facility will have both a specialized OTT staff and advanced diagnostic tools for monitoring, analytics, reporting, quality and availability measurement, giving Akamai customers delivering live, linear and VOD content a dedicated place for their needs.

“We’re replacing help tickets and hold time with real-time communication and deep, proactive monitoring designed to alert customers to potential issues before they actually arise,” said Akamai’s director of media operations Matt Azzarto, who designed the center, in a statement. “We’re taking the ubiquity of Akamai’s pervasive network and our media delivery solutions, and empowering a specialized staff who have ‘eyes-on-glass’ 24-7 to support our customers with a unique set of tools that we believe deliver unprecedented visibility into hundreds of live video streams and linear channels at any given time.”

Avere Systems

Avere Systems used the NAB Show to not only show off the latest in its FXT Edge Filer series of scale-out NAS storage for the hybrid cloud, it also had something fun to show off: it partnered with Wiley Brand to create a “Cloud Bursting for Dummies” book, offering up a simple explanation of how companies can expand their capabilities without expanding their physical footprint, and how to pursue a cloud strategy at a comfortable pace.

The enjoyable and simple book was paired with Avere’s introduction of its new, entry-level model to its FXT 5000 series product line, the 5200 Edge Filer, which can deliver the same software functionality of existing 5000 series offerings, but intended for those running lower performance workloads.

The 5200 offers 50% more storage in half the space of Avere’s preceding model (7.2 TB SAS HDD per node), and enables improved remote office collaboration, by offering WAN caching, creating centralized data access to users in satellite locations. The 5200 model starts at $75,500.

“Organizations are eager to move to the cloud to reap its economic and technical advantages, and the FXT 5200 model empowers them to do that by delivering object storage and allowing them to access it in traditional ways,” said Jeff Tabor, senior director of product management and marketing at Avere. “This entry-level model is crucial to many customers looking to achieve the same functionality as Avere’s existing 5000 series products at a lower cost for lower performance applications. The addition of the FXT 5200 completes the newest generation of the Avere Edge filer product line, which delivers performance and scalability at all levels.”