Olympusat Holdings, a long time provider of video distribution for family, faith, speciality and Spanish-language cable networks, recently announced that it is expanding its focus to include the enterprise market via its Olympusat Telecom division. Through a mix of partnerships that cover content ingest, asset management, encoding, ad insertion, hosting, distribution and last mile access, Olympusat Telecom is providing a complete offering for any company that wants a video presence.
Olympusat Telecom touts that its approach allows companies to control their content destiny. That is, with the Olymusat Telecom solution the enterprise decides how content is presented and is not subject to the whims of a third-party, such as a Facebook or YouTube, that can change the rules at any time. That is not to say that Facebook or YouTube are incompatible with the Olympusat Telecom solution as companies presumably could still use these popular social networks as distribution channels for their Olympusat Telecom managed video.
Olympusat Telecom has a number of high-profile partners including Kit Digital, Akamai, Level 3, Comcast Business Class, Century Link, Hibernia Media, Windstream, AT&T/ACC Business and Strangeloop Networks. On the surface, many of these partners would also seem to be competitors. Olympusat appears to be pragmatic in working with its partners, however, and adjusts its offering to balance the needs of the customer with the strengths of its partners.
C. Austin Powers, Olympusat Telecom’s president, suggested that these entities are, “Partners, not so much resellers, because if they can bring us customers then it is a win-win.” As an end-to-end, enterprise solution, Olympusat Telecom biggest competitors may be the consulting firms or customers that look to, “build it themselves.”
Olympusat Telecom purports to have, “delivered streaming video services to over 60,000 live events in 2011 for major corporations such as Delta, FedEx and Turner Broadcasting.” Beyond the enterprise, Olympusat sees opportunity working with the smaller cable networks that want a TV Everywhere solution or an ala-carte offering to reach viewers who can’t receive their programming through traditional distributors.
Powers suggested that, “Video is a way for ISPs to keep their customers and that being able to offer a streaming service is important to ISPs.” As such, they are buttressing ISPs ability to compete with other telecom services, such as voice services. Powers suggests that they will have a 4th quarter announcement on a consumer offering of telecom services
Olympusat Telecom’s media solution is part of a multi-prong strategy to be a complete hosted cloud and data telecom solution for enterprise customers. By leading with a complete video solution and what argubably is the most difficult service to provide, Olympusat Telecom may be able to convince enterprises to shift other telecom services to their platform.
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