• Brightcove Partners With Akamai HD Network for Bundled Delivery

    Online video platform Brightcove is transitioning its bundled content delivery offering to the Akamai HD network, for which it will now be a value-added reseller. Jeff Whatcott, Brightcove's SVP of Marketing, explained to me last week that the decision was made in reaction to its customers'  delivery requirements becoming more complex.  Akamai HD's differentiators included improved economics, analytics, mobile delivery and global coverage among others.

    Though the deal isn't exclusive, it will involve Brightcove moving over all of its customers who have been using the bundled delivery offering from Limelight, Brightcove's prior delivery partner. Jeff estimates more than 80% of Brightcove's customers take advantage of bundled delivery, though from Brightcove's standpoint, the fees it derives from delivery are small relative to its software and platform fees. Going forward, Brightcove will continue working with Limelight and other CDNs with whom it has relationships.

    Suzanne Johnson, Akamai's director of industry marketing, noted that Brightcove and Akamai have been working together for a while on mutual customers. Now the Akamai HD network will be fully integrated into the Brightcove platform. The Brightcove alliance is a win for Akamai which has been aggressively promoting the advantages of its HD capabilities since unveiling the service last September. Akamai recently reported that for  the World Cup, it supported a peak of 20 million visitors per minute. With the proliferation of connected devices bringing online video to viewers' TVs, expectations for increasing online video quality are going to escalate.

    What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).

    (Note: Akamai is a VideoNuze sponsor.)