Brightcove End-of-Life 新闻 for Ooyala OVP Has Customers Panicked

Ooyala OVP customers received a message from Brightcove last week with some unsettling news. Brightcove, 以1500万美元收购了Ooyala的OVP部门 in February 2019, announced it will discontinue the OVP completely. The end-of-life process will be complete by April 1, 2020.

新闻1 "We have determined that the best path forward for our newly-acquired customers is to accelerate their migration path to the Brightcove platform,消息是这样写的. “作为迁徙的一部分, the version of the Brightcove Service known as the Ooyala OVP will be moved into an end-of-life state."

这个消息令人不安的原因有很多. For one, customers recently had been assured that Brightcove would continue to support the OVP. 也, when a product is designated as end-of-life (EOL) the standard process is to create an easy migration path and give existing customers plenty of time to plan the move. Brightcove's announcement came with no advance warning and an abbreviated timeline.

StreamingMedia.com spoke with one current customer (who chose to remain anonymous) who said his organization felt blindsided. 在收购Ooyala之后, his team had received three formal roadmap updates from Brightcove, 从NAB开始, and all promised full support for 12 to 18 months.

“这当然是一个惊喜, and it runs contrary to what we were being told in the last six months,客户说.

Brightcove hopes to migrate clients to its own OVP, but the customer said that process likely won't be effort- or cost-free, and will involve much testing as well as frontend and backend development. 当移民伴随着这种程度的工作, 公司不妨考虑其他选择, 他说.

While his organization will be able to complete a migration in the allotted time, 这将意味着搁置所有其他项目. His organization was happy with Ooyala and hadn't been planning a change.

在逮捕, Brightcove executives expressed a desire to unify their two OVPs, 但没有给出明确的时间表, 客户说. Later in the summer they still didn't show a firm understanding of when that would happen.

“这未必是正确的做法, 用一个相当激进的时间线让我们措手不及,客户说.

StreamingMedia.com also spoke with a former Brightcove employee with contacts within the company, and this person echoed that Ooyala customers were told that nothing would change in the near future, 而且没有得到任何警告. The former employee believes cost was the reason for the sudden shutdown—that the cost of maintaining the Ooyala OVP, 即使是很短的时间, 对Brightcove来说太陡了. The full cost of the OVP wasn't obvious to Brightcove management during the due diligence phase of the Ooyala acquisition, 前雇员认为.

这一EOL公告是在两个月后发布的 StreamingMedia.com 报道 Brightcove正在裁减和重组员工, with many in media sales feeling pushed out of the company. 当时, 消息人士认为杰夫·雷, 公司的新CEO, was orienting the company toward enterprise customers and away from media. Internal emails sent after the leadership change said the company needed to hit an aggressive 20% growth rate by 2020, 这位前雇员说. EOL的决定可能是这一转向的一部分, 前雇员认为, and could ultimately benefit Vimeo and JW Player as media customers look for a new home.

StreamingMedia.com 联系了Brightcove请其置评, however an interview with CMO Sara Larsen was called off just minutes before it was to begin. A PR representative offered this statement from Larsen instead: "To ensure our customers have a rich experience and a more stable, 安全, 可扩展的环境, Brightcove将让Ooyala OVP退休. We are working with all customers on individualized migration plans to Video Cloud. Brightcove is committed to ensuring our customers reap the power and value of video technology, including access to new capabilities on Video Cloud."