IneoQuest, which offers quality monitoring and assurance services for over-the-top video providers, is adding to its cloud-based focus by launching three products designed to work in NFV (network functions virtualization) and SDN (software defined networking) environments.
These scalable products include Expedus DVA IP, a tool that verifies the quality of adaptive bitrate content preparation; iQDialogue ASM, which monitors quality of service across the delivery infrastructure; and iVMS ASM, which is basically one portal to manage them all.
Why the hullaballoo around SDN and NFV? These emerging technologies aim to make cloud-based applications and services much easier to deal with. Online video providers are increasingly dependent on cloud services to reliably deliver their streams, but getting the most out of those remote services is becoming increasingly complex.
Netflix, for example, just completed a seven-year project to shift its video files and billing/payments data completely over to AWS servers, a task it had initially estimated would take perhaps five years to finish. The SVOD provider said on its tech blog that it essentially had to re-architect its technology into a "cloud native" system. "Arguably, the easiest way to move to the cloud is to forklift all of the systems, unchanged, out of the data center and drop them in AWS. But in doing so, you end up moving all the problems and limitations of the data center along with it," said Yury Izrailevsky, Stevan Vlaovic and Ruslan Meshenberg in a blog post.
Network functions virtualization along with SDN, it is hoped, can help streamline processes like Netflix's data center transfer a lot more easily -- among other things.
IneoQuest's three products, which launch in April, hope to catch the early wave of NFV deployments -- not just to grab a share of profits but to optimize the way their tools work for OTT delivery customers. "NFV and SDN enabled deployments require real time information in order to be rapidly scalable and successful. In the case of video delivery, real-time quality metrics will be critical in order to catch a consumer before they get frustrated and drop the stream," said CEO Calvin Harrison in a release.
The company said it worked closely with several unnamed "leading service providers" to validate its solutions for multiscreen service assurance and virtualization platforms. It also tested its products with various Intel blade and server platforms and worked with the manufacturer to pioneer several proof-of-concepts around its Mobile Edge Computing as part of the Intel Network Builders program.
IneoQuest plans to make its solutions available to providers in April.
For more:
- see the release
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