Video powers everything—from your favorite streaming shows to real-time drone surveillance and even mission-critical military ops. At the StreamTV Show, Wowza CEO Krish Kumar and Chief Solutions Architect Barry Owen explained how their platform supports this diverse and growing ecosystem. Built to scale, Wowza’s video infrastructure is used across industries for its flexibility, security, and ability to deliver reliable experiences at scale.
For companies of any size, the key question is: how critical is video to your business? The answer helps determine whether to start with a black box solution like YouTube, a customizable white-label setup, or a fully tailored video stack. Wowza helps businesses at every stage—whether it's enabling seamless surveillance in remote locations or powering high-demand media platforms. As Owen emphasized, “Do you have a fleet of engineers who understand codecs just lying around?” If not, Wowza’s ready-made, developer-friendly stack offers a solid path to scale without starting from scratch.
David Bloom:
Hi, everybody. I'm David Bloom with Next TMT. I'm here with my colleague, Bevin Fletcher, Senior Editor of Streaming TV Insider, StreamTV Insider, the StreamTV show's live studio. We had two executives from Wowza, a cool company that providing some of the infrastructure really of the video revolution. We've got CEO, Krish Kumar and Barry Owen, the Chief Solutions Architect for the company. Krish, tell me real quickly if you would, Wowza's a fun name, Devin, and I agree, this is a fun name to say.
Krish Kumar:
It is definitely a fun name, yeah.
David Bloom:
It's not necessarily directly related to providing video architecture and structures. Give me an idea, our viewers an idea of what you guys do, where you do it, and all the different sectors. I don't think people understand how video is in everything.
Krish Kumar:
Yeah, Wowza's definitely a cool name, and I think if you think about Wowza, it's actually the technology underneath every video infrastructure. And what we mean by that is if you're delivering any video, if you're a video provider, if you're a video application developer, if you're a video platform developer, you need an underlying infrastructure. And I think Wowza is the technology behind that infrastructure. We actually enable streaming at scale.
David Bloom:
So you're way down the stack as an enabling technology that they build things on top of it.
Krish Kumar:
Exactly. And we help video builders actually build a platform in the stack that enables all of these wonderful video services. And I think as you mentioned, video is everywhere. It's just not in media and entertainment, it's across every field. There's more cameras now and people are consuming video-based content now, more than static content, more than ever, so that's driving the video revolution, and we're seeing that. Wowza's in every industry.
David Bloom:
We're talking like defense, we're talking about military applications, we're talking about security. We're talking industrial manufacturing things.
Krish Kumar:
All of those.
David Bloom:
Lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff. Every car is going to be creating lots of video as we go forward, right?
Krish Kumar:
Exactly. When you think about the amount of cameras you have in the corner that have eyes on you, and whether it's transportation, it's surveillance, military, drones, race cars, videos, entertainment. So if you look at a categorically, it's anytime you're monitoring or doing surveillance, anytime you're actually doing events or entertainment, videos there. And that actually forms a part of every workflow. And what's more and more important is that it's actually video's in part of more modern workflows than ever before now.
Bevin Fletcher:
Well, so clearly you guys have your hands in a lot of different areas, which is great, but I think there are probably different approaches by partner builds. So what are some of the trends you're seeing about the different choices available in the market?
Barry Owen:
So what you're seeing is video is really becoming a core component of many businesses. So it's beyond where video is the products to how video supports your products. So we're seeing people looking at how are they going to integrate video into their stack. These can be mission-critical use cases like security surveillance, or it could be enhancements to an existing workflow. So people need to look hard at how they can do that without expending resources and reinventing the wheel. So if you look at the decisions you're trying to make in some of the trade-offs, what do you need to focus on to build your business? And is video infrastructure part of that stack or should video infrastructure be part of what your team's doing?
David Bloom:
This is an interesting question, though, because if you're a small company, but it's a big part of your business, you've definitely got to be there. But are there decision points or maybe more like you go outside because you're this big and it's this portion of your business?
Barry Owen:
Absolutely. You have several choices. You can do what we call black box, which is maybe just using YouTube or you can do a white label.
David Bloom:
It's a very large black box.
Barry Owen:
It's a very large black box, but it's a very black box.
David Bloom:
It's a black box.
Barry Owen:
You have no control over your brand, you have no control what ads or what next is showing up, and you have very little control of your monetization. So maybe that gets you started quickly and maybe you can see if you can build an audience.
David Bloom:
That might be like a test bit.
Barry Owen:
Exactly. And then you're going to want to move to something else. So maybe you go with more of a white label approach where you get some level of control over the monetization aspects, maybe some level of control of the workflow, but maybe you still don't have enough control over the user experience at that point. So where do you go from there? Well, it's at that point then what you try to do is you really go find some best in breed partners that can help you with those key video components, but give you the extensibility and the flexibility to build exactly what fits your business.
Krish Kumar:
And I think when you look at it from a video standpoint, whether you're a small company or a large company, the question is how strategic is video to your core business?
David Bloom:
That's really crucial though, because you could be a small company, but this will make or break your company, right?
Krish Kumar:
Right, correct.
David Bloom:
So you've really got, this is a crucial conversation in some companies, but a bigger company, maybe it's a smaller part of it.
Krish Kumar:
Exactly, but it could be a big company. But communication through video is a mission-critical component of the company for the company. And if that's the scenario, then to various points, you need a lot of control. You need a lot of flexibility, and you need to be able to granularly control how that video is delivered and consumed, and therefore, you need that flexibility and our platform actually enables you do that. Then on the other spectrum, we have companies that pretty much video is the core business, and in that point it's like a no-brainer, right? Then you actually do need, and at that point we call it mission-critical. At that point, you do need all the components, reliability, you need security, you need the ability to basically customize it. And also, it needs to be familiar.
Wowza's everywhere. So today you'll see that a lot of developers understand it, they understand the workflow, they understand ISDKs, they actually know how to scale it, and more importantly, they know that it's bulletproof. So I think those things become really important when you actually are looking at a video provider.
Bevin Fletcher:
So there are a lot of elements to consider, obviously, and as companies are evaluating which works best for them, are there any questions you could give advice that they should be asking or what they should be trying to?
Barry Owen:
Yeah, for sure, there's a few. We talked about the whole black box, white box thing a little bit, but the biggest question you can ask is, do I have the resources and the expertise to do this myself? Do you have a fleet of engineers knowing that understand video codecs.
David Bloom:
Just laying around, right?
Barry Owen:
Yeah, no, they don't.
David Bloom:
Yes, you do.
Barry Owen:
Unless you're Netflix, no, you don't. They don't exist, so ask that question and what do I need to grow my business and build my ROI and what can I outsource or use stable, reliably commercially supported tools? And that's the biggest one. And then really it comes down to what level of control you need, what level of customization you might need. A white label service might be just fine for you, where you're consuming everything maybe as SaaS via an API. But if you're building an embedded product where you're delivering this product to remote locations, whether it's military or public safety, you need something you can actually install in that box and customize and fit your application.
David Bloom:
Those are all, I think, really good place for a lot of companies, including many that are here, at the StreamTV Show to consider. I thank you, Barry and Krish from Wowza. Wowza, Wowza, Wowza.
Bevin Fletcher:
Can I say it one more time, too? Wowza.
Krish Kumar:
Go Wowza.
Barry Owen:
Go Wowza.
David Bloom:
It's good with a good deep voice.
Krish Kumar:
You have to say it Wowza.
David Bloom:
But that [inaudible 00:08:04], as well. And Bevin Fletcher, Senior Editor at StreamTV Insider. I'm David Bloom with Next TMT. Thanks.