Sorenson Targets Brightcove in Updated Release of Online Video Platform Technology

Sorenson Media CEO Peter Csathy tells me it was always part of the company’s plan to introduce its digital media technology in the enterprise market, where big media and Internet companies enable Internet users to watch streaming video and TV broadcasts. Today the company with offices in Salt Lake City, UT, and Carlsbad, CA, is announcing just that.

Sorenson is introducing its Sorenson 360 v2 online video platform (OVP) for big businesses exactly one year after launching the Sorenson 360 platform in the market for small-to-medium businesses, with a focus on luxury tour and travel operators and advertising and marketing firms. Now, after gaining experience and putting some mileage on its system, Csathy says Sorenson is targeting the big media and enterprise customers that use rival online video delivery technology—a market currently dominated by Brightcove of Cambridge, MA.

Peter Csathy
Peter Csathy

Sorenson’s announcement coincides with the Streaming Media East conference that begins today in New York, and Csathy sounds like he’s spoiling to take on the industry giant and any other rivals. “We’re going squarely into space occupied by Brightcove,” Csathy says. He acknowledges that it’s a crowded space for the companies that provide online video technology to Internet video publishers. Other than Brightcove, Ooyala of Mountain View, CA, is probably the name mentioned most frequently, Csathy says. “After that, it’s an open game with scores of competitors—all small, VC-backed companies trying to gain market penetration, and none of them has established a business model that works.”

All the competition is emerging because the market for online video is booming. Nielsen Online reports that online users watched more than 11 billion streaming videos in September—a 25 percent game over the videos streamed in September 2008. Yet the rating service also says 139.3 million of those watching were unique viewers, a relatively small number compared with the number of videos shown. In other words, the global online audience still has plenty of room to grow, and with an estimated 79 video streams per viewer, the demand for online video technology is bound to increase dramatically among the world’s YouTubes, Hulus, and Yahoos.

So how does a relatively small company like Sorenson stand out?

“Our video quality has always been our calling card,” says Csathy, who describes Sorenson’s HD digital media technology as “professional grade.” He described

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.