eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
With streaming video becoming more and more strategic in B2B and B2C user experiences, new-gen video platform provider Kaltura has decided now’s the time for expansion. Kaltura’s services connect a lot of important dots in the production of video communications and provide valuable services; yet the company stays quietly in the background minding its own business.
The New York City-based video IT provider on Nov. 26 announced that it is expanding the capabilities of its webcasting platform, which enables users to broadcast reliable and scalable webcasts of any size, to any device, both within and outside of an organization. It does this through configurable video delivery solutions that optimize network performance and use of bandwidth, the company said.
Go here to see eWEEK’s Resource Page on Intent-Based Networking.
Zoom, Webex and others can be used on platform
These new capabilities enable any user to become a broadcaster straight from a desktop. The platform includes a central Events Hub and real-time analytics capabilities, allowing managers to connect and engage with employees and customers across the globe with live, interactive video. Coupled with video messaging, enterprise podcasting and vodcasting and collaborative VOD spaces, Kaltura brings a series of communication options to any organization.
For example, organizations can now use Kaltura’s Video Conferencing Integrations (VCI) for applications such as Zoom, WebEx and Skype for Business. Connecting Kaltura Webcasting with video conferencing tools enables users to deploy their existing video conference infrastructure (rooms, cameras, equipment) alongside the broad set of interactive features of Kaltura Webcasting, both for the live broadcast and immediately available on-demand recordings.
Kaltura’s new webcasting also offers users a clear snapshot of overall event performance, regardless of event scale, all through advanced real-time analytics. With the ability to go live, users can monitor and analyze both quality of service and engagement in real time and in one control console.
Kaltura Real-Time Analytics for Webcasting also provides advanced filtering, comparisons and drill-down options to run post-event analysis and measure ROI. The Events Hub provides users with an easy-to-use, branded hub to access and manage all published live events and past events from a single place, the company said.
Oracle deal put Kaltura on the IT map
The signing of Oracle to a major deal last September put Kaltura squarely in the B2B IT spotlight. Oracle is now OEM-ing the Kaltura Video Platform as a Service (VPaaS). The partnership enables Oracle to add advanced rich media capabilities to its cloud services, including interactive video creation and editing, management, search, cross-platform video playback and engagement and intelligent media analytics. Oracle had not provided any of these capabilities to this extent previously.
As a result of the partnership, Oracle customers are now able to use advanced video tools—all from Kaltura running under the Oracle flag—across all Oracle Cloud products. For example, Oracle Marketing Cloud customers can use native video management distribution and engagement tools in addition to advanced video analytics tightly integrated into Eloqua and Responsys.
Similarly, Oracle Commerce customers will utilize native support for video catalogs and so-called “shoppable” videos. Finally, all customers will be able to use video tools for employee, customer and partner engagement.
“The mission of our business is to power any video experience,” CEO, Chairman and founder Ron Yekutiel told eWEEK. “True to that, over the course of the last decade, we’ve built a very strong horizontal IP stack to power up myriad different solutions, using video for a lot of different purposes.
“We provide video portals, webcasting tools, streaming video, video emails, smart analytics and many others. We also offer industry-specific solutions for education (internal for professors and students and for distance learning) and media/telcom. Kaltura also provides the infrastructure for OTT (over-the-top) television networks.”
Europe’s Vodafone is Kaltura’s largest customer, Yekutiel said.
Kaltura’s Video Cloud Platform works with numerous global organizations, including 30% of Fortune 100 companies and 15 of the top 20 universities in the U.S., Yekutiel said.
For more information, go here.