Published on the 13/08/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Demand for the technology smarts to stream and monetise video content is increasing as the cost of production and delivery falls, and consumer appetite balloons…
Anyone who has ever put together Ikea furniture understands that sinking feeling when, after following the pictogram instructions, there is one screw left over. Movideo, which provides video-as-a-service across Asia Pacific is now pitching an idea to the Swedish furniture maker that it instead offer customers access to videos which show them how to build furniture step by step.
According to Benjamin Yun, vice president of business development for Southeast Asia, there is rising appetite for video from enterprises both in Australia and New Zealand and across the region. The company, a division of MCM Entertainment, hosts its service on the Microsoft Azure cloud, and has deployed the Zuora subscription payment system to handle billing.
Although the bulk of its business is still with media and entertainment companies, which are used to monetising video content, it is starting to see growing demand from enterprise customers in other sectors.
Demand for video is soaring. Statistics released in June by Cisco indicate that by 2018 79 percent of all internet traffic (excluding peer to peer) will be video – up from 66 percent in 2013. It says that by 2018 nearly a million minutes of video will cross the internet every second.
This soaring demand explains why Telstra yesterday announced that it would fork out a further $US270 million to acquire 98 percent of video streaming and analytics business Ooyala. It has already invested $US61 million in the company.
Piggybacking on Ooyala’s technology Telstra is looking to build a business that hinges around serving up – and monetising – video content to any digital device.
It’s precisely the same market that Movideo is gunning for.
According to Yun, most organisations don’t typically have the in house experience needed to deliver online video, nor the agility required to compete effectively on any device. Movideo’s cloud service allowed companies to “deliver and manage content and monetise it on any device”.
While Yun acknowledged that there would continue to be a role for YouTube as a video platform, he said that premium video services, where the customer experience could be customised and content monetised required a more sophisticated approach.
But with Telstra now in the running the local competition will be even stiffer.
