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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, November 2, 2010
Azuki touts new mobile video platform for content makers
By Rodney H. Brown
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Azuki Systems Inc. is hoping to leap over the mobile carriers by putting its end-to-end video delivery technology into a rack-mountable appliance for the first time, and targeting it directly at content providers and enterprises, instead of just the carriers themselves.
According to Fred Sammartino, director of marketing at Azuki, the new appliance, tagged the Azuki Wireless Platform, contains all of the Acton company’s video streaming software, from capturing the source to converting to any number of end-user formats, to adding things such as digital rights management features and advertising messages. One of the keys to getting adoption of the new appliance by the content makers, Sammartino said, is the fact that the appliance also contains Azuki’s mobile appliance creator kit, which allows them to make an appliance for nearly any smartphone operating system.
The system already has one enterprise-level content creator as a use in Sony Corp., which used the Azuki system to expand its Crackle mobile movie and TV app into operating systems like Google Inc.’s Android. Creating their own dedicated app with Azuki’s technology at its core allows the content provider to set up any type of pay-per-use or subscription-based payment model, put in tags for automatic placement of ads and have a level of DRM that would allow the app to know even if it is being run on a hacked phone that may not have rights to the kind of apps it is running, Sammartino said. Going after companies like Sony, whether with an appliance or offering its technology in a software-as-a-service model like it has been doing, has been in the cards from the beginning, he said.
“This is part of the original plan of the company,” Sammartino said. “We see our customer base starting with the major content providers who, for the first time, are going to be able to reach their customers directly. We are also targeting enterprises who are going to use it for putting together things like training videos.”
By allowing the content providers to go “over the top” and bypass any video delivery system already set up by the mobile carriers – such as AT&T’s U-verse – Azuki may run the risk of alienating those current and potential clients, but Sammartino isn’t concerned.
“A year ago they would have resisted it, but now we are seeing across the board acceptance of reality,” he said. “They see these trends, that over-the-top is happening, and it really is a matter of joining it instead of fighting.”
Carriers are also still a major target for Azuki, Sammartino said, and the company counts Sprint Nextel Corp. as one customer in that class. “We are already in discussions with most of the major infrastructure players,” he said.
In August, Azuki – founded in 2007 as Peermeta Inc. – named former Iron Mountain Digital president John Clancy as its new CEO. Since 2007, the company has raised a total of $12 million, the latest being a $3 million tranche this summer, which was part of an expanded Series A round that began last May, with two venture firms participating – Kepha, and Sigma Partners of Boston.
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