We concluded the event with our first annual Bitmovin Innovators Network partner awards to recognize and celebrate the amazing work of our partners who embrace the fact that the industry is “Better Together”, by creating solutions with partners that are designed to simplify customers’ video workload needs and advance the viewing experience for audiences.

I am incredibly proud to share the winners of the Bitmovin Innovators Network partner awards below, and the contributions they’ve made: 

Accenture – Global Systems Integrator of the Year:

Accenture and Bitmovin exemplify the “better together” approach through their close strategic partnership, including an ongoing collaboration with the world’s largest motorsports content owners that led to joint engagements with several of the largest sports and media brands in the world.

Broadpeak – Global ISV Partner of the Year:

Broadpeak embodies the “Better Together” spirit through its unwavering strategic collaboration with Bitmovin. This powerful partnership has yielded several key benefits. Together, they have developed solutions that integrated with Bitmovin’s encoder, player, and analytics, resulting in improved workflows for customers; created a consistent two-way communication between sales teams which has resulted in successful deals with European media brands, and joint marketing and PR initiatives at local events to strengthen their joint brand presence.

MediaKind –  Global Service Provider Partner of the Year:

MediaKind and Bitmovin have developed and maintained a robust strategic partnership that has launched sports applications for world-renowned sports leagues. These applications, including launching an app with a sports league on Apple Vision Pro that garnered rave reviews at the Apple launch event, have significantly boosted market visibility for both brands.

Microsoft Azure Marketplace – Cloud Marketplace of the Year:

Bitmovin has had unprecedented success with the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, including more than 200 new customer wins since June 2023. Azure Marketplace has quickly become Bitmovin’s largest and most successful sales channel.

Nomad Media – Americas Regional Channel Partner of the Year:

Nomad Media has deployed over 30 customers on the Bitmovin Play platform in 2023 alone as part of its Nomad Media platform. Nomad Media has also innovated on the player capabilities with dynamic multi-view capabilities. These advancements were showcased to major US clients, propelling both companies forward. This collaboration not only built a strong pipeline but also significantly boosted brand recognition in the US market.

G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky – EMEA Regional Channel Partner of the Year:

G&L is a proactive and committed industry partner, who has worked with Bitmovin on both successful sales and marketing initiatives. The collaboration between the two companies resulted in joint revenue, a new logo, and G&L also exhibited on the Bitmovin stand at IBC 2023 where it highlighted how the two companies’ solutions work together. Bitmovin and G&L also hosted a joint CMCD webinar together, which attracted attendees from key German broadcasters and various telecoms and content providers, and it recently published an e-commerce case study with Home Shopping Europe.

Viet Communications – APAC Regional Channel Partner of the Year

Vietcoms was the first licensee for the Bitmovin Player in the Asia Pacific region. Vietcoms was selected for its hard work and efforts in securing our impressive player business in Vietnam and developing agile operational models to meet the specific customer and TelCo business needs and technical requirements.

Once again, I’d like to give huge congratulations to all the winners. A huge thank you to everyone who attended the Bitmovin Innovators Network Partner Executive Networking Event, and to every single one of our partners who continue to embrace the spirit of “Better Together.” IBC is just around the corner, and we will have some exciting initiatives and announcements coming soon to share with you ahead of the show.

The post The Bitmovin Innovators Network “Better Together” Award Winners! appeared first on Bitmovin.

Streaming video is . . . complicated. 

As the streaming industry continues to evolve toward early mainstream adoption, cloud-based streaming has increasingly shifted from “builder” customers with deep, long-standing video expertise to “buyer” customers. This is particularly true for streaming in non-media industry verticals, but it is equally the case for Media & Entertainment customers as well. “Buyer” customers often lack the technical expertise and internal resources to build and maintain such complex, bespoke workflows. Over the past 18 months, mounting pressure to reduce operating cost, improve subscriber retention, and generate new advertising revenue has also caused a sizable number of “builder” customers to transition from in-house development to managed services. 

In short, this means that multi-vendor solutions and technical integrations have become increasingly valuable and important for streaming customers large and small in every industry.

“Better Together” with the Bitmovin Innovators Network

The Bitmovin Innovators Network is more than just another partner program. Launched in 2022, the Bitmovin Innovators Network is a community of industry-leading technology vendors, resellers, consultants, device manufacturers, cloud providers, and academic researchers that collaborate to provide pre-integrated solutions to simplify streaming video. 

I often say, “Customers buy simplicity rather than features.” Sure, feature functionality is important, but industry maturity and in some cases commoditization have made product development, product marketing, product selling, and product support much less of a differentiator than just five years ago. Today, customers place a premium on solutions that solve challenges for a wide range of use cases. Solutions development, solutions marketing, solutions selling, and solutions support are table stakes. “Better together” rules the day.

“Better Together” at NAB

We are pleased to announce a multitude of “Better Together” solutions with our partners at NAB, each designed to simplify customers’ video workload needs. These are some of the joint solutions that Bitmovin and our partners are showcasing at this year’s NAB Show:

Joint Customer Success Stories 

Bitmovin once again hosts its exclusive semi-annual Bitmovin Innovators Network Partner Executive Networking Event on Saturday, April 13 from 3:30 – 6:00 pm. We are excited to share several customer success stories, including Quickplay presenting a “better together” customer success story regarding a large Regional Sports Network (RSN); and a fireside chat with OneFootball and Akamai. We conclude the afternoon with the first annual Bitmovin Innovators Network partner awards and the most impactful executive networking event at this year’s NAB Show!

“Better Together” on the Bitmovin Stand

We are thrilled to share that two partners will have dedicated demo stations on the Bitmovin stand (W3013):

Edgio showcases its collaboration with Bitmovin, featuring Bitmovin Playback and Edgio Uplynk‘s Live Multi-CDN Switching in an all-encompassing solution for customers to ensure seamless video delivery.

Google Ad Manager will highlight how they are building a more flexible and interoperable Ad Manager to help publishers create sustainable advertising businesses by giving publishers actionable insights, powerful optimizations, and flexible integrations all within an end to end video-first ad serving experience.

“Better Together” at Partner Stands and Meeting Suites 

Several Bitmovin partners are demonstrating “Better Together” solutions to help customers with cost optimization, subscriber retention and growth, and ad revenue generation.

“Better Together” Social Activities with Partners 

Akamai and Bitmovin co-host an exclusive launch event at the Sphere, Las Vegas newest and most iconic entertainment destination, on Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 6:00 pm. Registration for this event is already closed.

Edgio and Bitmovin are co-hosting a networking reception and happy hour on the Bitmovin stand (W3013) on Tuesday, April 16, 2024 from 5:00 – 6:00 pm. Visit Edgio or Bitmovin for an invitation!

This year’s NAB Show promises to deliver a wealth of knowledge and innovation. Schedule a meeting with us to learn more about these and other solutions to help you reduce operating costs, retain and grow subscribership, and generate new ad revenue. 

We look forward to seeing you at the show!

The post The Bitmovin Innovators Network showcases “better together” solutions at NAB Show 2024 appeared first on Bitmovin.

Kip Schauer, Global Head of Media & Entertainment and Gaming Partnerships, said: “Google Cloud Marketplace is the go-to destination for our customers and partners to deploy new solutions. Oursolutions on, and our private offer functionality provides greater flexibility and deal-making capabilities. It’s fantastic to see Bitmovin introducing private offers for its live and VOD encoding solutions, making its industry-leading technologies even more accessible to Google Cloud Marketplace customers.”

Let’s take a closer look at the announcement and its potential benefit. Our VOD & Live Encoding SaaS products are now available through Google Cloud Marketplace. Here’s how this can reshape your approach to streaming.

Google Cloud Marketplace and Private Offers

Google Cloud Marketplace enables the rapid deployment of fully functional software packages that operate seamlessly on Google Cloud or as a multi-tenancy running in Bitmovin’s account. The benefits of buying from Google Cloud Marketplace is that this allows you to agree terms that suit your specific need including details such payment terms and contract durations. Buying via the Google Cloud Marketplace helps to simplify and shorten the procurement process whilst reducing committed spend by purchasing from the marketplace and receiving one single bill from Google.

VOD Encoding: Elevating Content Quality

Ensuring outstanding content quality is no longer a challenge. Our Next-Generation VOD Encoder boasts features like multi-codec streaming (including AV1), Per-Title and Per-Shot optimizations, 8K, and multi-HDR support. This means your audience can enjoy an unparalleled viewing experience.

Live Encoding: Seamlessly Streaming Live Content

Building upon our renowned VOD Encoder, the Live Encoder introduces a robust live video streaming software platform. It smoothly converts inputs from RTMP, SRT, or Zixi to outputs in HLS and DASH formats, ensuring seamless delivery to digital streaming services.

Industry-Leading Technology: Enhancing Viewer Satisfaction

In a world of diverse devices, delivering a consistent viewer experience is paramount. Bitmovin’s intelligently optimized adaptive bitrate renditions (ABR) guarantee uninterrupted streaming, regardless of the device or connectivity. From low-connectivity environments to high-performance devices, we’ve got you covered.

Efficiency and Cost Savings: Simplifying Your Workflow

Bid farewell to manual configurations. Our VOD & Live SaaS Encoding do the heavy lifting for you. With a decade of expertise in the streaming industry, we automatically apply all necessary parameters and optimizations, saving you time and reducing cloud compute, storage, and CDN distribution costs. You can provide top-quality videos while efficiently managing your streaming expenses.

But that’s not all. Our journey continues as we plan to make our Player and Analytics products available through the Google Cloud Marketplace. Stay tuned for early access and a growing partnership with Google Cloud.

The future of video streaming is here, thanks to Bitmovin’s presence on Google Cloud Marketplace. Elevate your streaming approach, redefine quality, and streamline your workflow in ways you never thought possible. Discover the Bitmovin products and access the advanced Bitmovin workflows, get started on Google Cloud Marketplace today!

The post Bitmovin Live and VOD Encoding now available in Google Cloud Marketplace via Private Offer appeared first on Bitmovin.

Leading-edge Innovation over the cloud

Live and on-demand streaming video have become ubiquitous for every use case ranging from Over-the-Top (OTT) video services such as Apple TV+ and HBO Max to eLearning platforms, religious services, music and sporting events, social media, and even internal corporate communications. With their video libraries growing exponentially and most video workflows increasingly adopting cloud-based systems, many search for an easy-to-use, off-the-shelf video encoding solution that they can purchase and deploy in minutes but have trouble finding one. This is where the AWS Marketplace comes in.

Frictionless procurement of video encoding software

To help open Bitmovin’s solutions to a broader audience, we have made Bitmovin Video Encoding available in AWS Marketplace! We chose to list Bitmovin’s Video Encoding in AWS Marketplace because it gives customers using AWS Marketplace to piece together their workflow a frictionless, self-service procurement option with the added benefit of being billed directly through their AWS account.

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding is a fully-managed Software as a Service (SaaS). Powered by massively distributed processing and content-aware encoding, it allows you to deliver stunning viewing experiences at the highest possible visual quality and the lowest bitrates. Unlike other encoding products, Bitmovin Video Encoding supports file-based transcoding, live encoding, and packaging in a single, easy-to-use product.

With support for industry-standard encryption from more than 15 Digital Rights Management (DRM) vendors, studio-grade forensic watermarking, and video resolutions of up to 8K Ultra-High Definition (UHD), you can cost-effectively and securely deliver video to viewers on any device anywhere in the world.

Deliver the highest quality, binge-worthy viewing experiences at a lower cost

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding supports over 50 audio and video codecs and file formats to ingest video from nearly any source. Multi-codec outputs, including H.264, HEVC, AV1, VP9, and others, mean that your audience can watch your content on mobile devices, smart TVs, streaming video player devices, set-top-boxes, web browsers, and game consoles using the most-efficient video codecs for each device type. 

Our content-aware transcoding capabilities, both per-title and per-scene, let you further optimize your Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) ladder to reduce your Content Delivery Network (CDN) cost significantly. It even supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, allowing you to captivate your audience with an immersive sound experience. Similarly, support for High Dynamic Range (HDR), including Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), and HDR10, as well as the ability to convert Dolby Vision inputs to HLG and HDR10, let you deliver visually spectacular video to any HDR-capable viewing device. You can even up-convert Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) video to HDR to rejuvenate your existing content library.

Stream video for any use case

Bitmovin’s Video Encoding is well suited for any industry that streams video over the internet, such as organizations within Media & Entertainment, Broadcast, Publishing, eLearning, Sports and Events, esports, social media, and even Telcos. Additionally, large customers with AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) agreements benefit from purchasing SaaS products through AWS Marketplace because those purchases apply to their EDP commitment.

Check it out!

See how Bitmovin’s Video Encoding, available in AWS Marketplace, can help you quickly and easily harness the power of video streaming for your use case!

The post Bitmovin Video Encoding is now available in AWS Marketplace! appeared first on Bitmovin.