Blackwave Takes On Asian CDN Market, Asian Style

鲍勃Rizika, Blackwave首席执行官, announced in September 2009 that the company had received funding of $7 million. 在过去的几个月, the company has been using those funds to substantially increase its presence in key Asian markets, and today announced the opening of headquarter offices in Tokyo and Seoul, as well as a partnership with Shinsegae, 韩国最大的零售商.

Blackwave is primarily a hardware play that offers both high-performance storage—competing with the likes of Isilon and NetApp—as well as streaming servers.

Blackwave's most recent focus has been on the Asian market, where Rizika has put together sales channels in key markets for several companies over the last decade.

“亚洲与美国不同.S.,里兹卡说 in a recent interview. "CDNs account for a very small percentage of total content delivery. 例如, Limelight has approximately $10 million in business in the 日本ese market and is ranked number 2 in the total market."

日本
Distribution channels in Asia typically takes six to eight months to build, 根据Rizika, so the company has focused on bringing on Mitsubishi and IT Frontiers (Mitsubishi's reseller) as well as N2, 一个更小的, 高度集中的经销商群体, 在日本. Toshiba will act as a service provider.

Shigeyuki佐藤, who was with nCube and Envivio for several years, in addition to "many years in the ISP, 有线电视和电信空间,里兹卡说, will serve as 日本 Country Manager.

韩国
The IT arm of the largest retailer in 韩国, Shinsegae, partnered with Blackwave to run its entire CDN operations, Blackwave今天宣布.

"Most companies tend to build out their own solutions rather than using a CDN,里兹卡说. "There are more E-CDNs in Asia than CDNs by almost a 6:1 ratio. In fact, multiple CDNs in Asia will be resellers of Blackwave equipment."

Blackwave's Country Manager for South 韩国 is Shinhuei Lee, who prior to Blackwave worked for KPMG-Peat Marwick in Australia providing technical and value-added consulting services. 在那之前, he spent 10 years in the data storage industry, including two years at EMC and eight years at Hyosung Information Systems, 日立数据系统的经销商.

New Software Release Adds Flash Capability
Blackwave, 在其R7软件版本中, is also adding Flash Media Interactive Server capability to Blackwave's 1U streaming server.

"We build APIs to bolt into any of the middleware solutions,里兹卡说, when asked whether the company's storage and streaming server middleware is complementary to other middleware products such as Qumu.

"Our solution looks at the storage impact on serving up popular streams," he continued. "We'll move a streaming file from interior to exterior of disc, 例如, so our value-add is performance of 6x over most streaming servers.

Previously Blackwave had integrated Wowza, which Rizika used as an example of a performance boost.

“我们的Wowza服务器运行速度约为2.5Gbps versus 400-500Kpbs for the typical Wowza implementation,里兹卡说. "This allows not only a lower cost of ownership but also lower operational expenses."

"Our whole value add is a 5-10x performance over what you'd typically build yourself,里兹卡说. "One customer has reduced 20 racks to 2 racks, saving a cost of almost $3,000 per rack. 减少了18个架子, 这位顾客节省了将近54美元,000 in recurring data center co-location costs."

The FMIS addition is purely satisfying customer requests, and Blackwave is working with the largest reseller of Adobe Flash 在日本 who has also signed up to resell Blackwave. The company says all plug-ins are supported, 除了File插件, which is used to talk to the Blackwave system, as well as Action Scripts and server-side playlists.

“我们可以实现1.每台服务器5Gbps的MP4内容, using a minimum of 2 servers for 3Gbps throughput," the company's release details state, as well as "1Gbps per server for FLV content, 至少有2台服务器. We expect to increase FLV performance over time."

Rizika also said that Asia is picking up on over-the-top video and the TV Everywhere concept.

"We're seeing a great deal of interest in TV Everywhere in 韩国, 日本 and China,里兹卡说. “在日本, we've rolled out tests with our first IPTV infrastructure providers and we've sold solutions to ITVMG in 韩国, who does all the pumps for (韩国n telco) KT. We essentially allow all these video companies to run their own servers rather than relying on CDN providers."