Bitmovin and Akamai announce joint solution aimed at reducing streaming costs

Bitmovin has announced the launch and immediate general availability of Bitmovin’s Live Encoder running on Akamai Cloud Computing, the world’s most distributed cloud platform. By reducing data transfer out (DTO) costs, the combination of Bitmovin Live Encoding and Akamai can help lower operation costs by as much as 90%. (The percentage represents data transfer out / egress cost that an existing Akamai CDN customer that runs their encoding on another cloud would pay to send live streams / data out of the another cloud vendor to Akamai CDN.)

Running Bitmovin Live Encoder on Akamai Cloud Computing is intended to help streaming services deliver better live viewing experiences across a host of use cases including sports/eSports, news, online fitness, eLearning, religious services, large-scale events, corporate communications, and political campaigns among others. Bitmovin’s Live Encoder also supports several ad monetization models, including 24/7 linear television channels and Free Ad-supported Television (FAST) channels.

“Bitmovin can help its live-streaming customers deliver higher-quality viewing experiences, and reduce and better control costs by running Live Encoder on Akamai Cloud Computing,” said Dan Lawrence, Vice President of Cloud Computing at Akamai. “Placing and executing Live Encoder’s critical compute functions closer to end users can realize lower latency streaming while maintaining the high quality of service that consumers have come to expect and demand from streaming providers. It can also help dramatically reduce DTO fees in many cases. Collectively, we believe this meets the industry’s desire to continue raising the standards of live streaming, provide lower and more predictable operational costs, and more opportunities to monetize content.”

Bitmovin’s Live Encoder has an intuitive user interface that makes it easy for users of all levels to set up live streams quickly, while Bitmovin’s robust API gives developers complete control over every aspect of the encoding pipeline. Live Encoder is also pre-integrated with Akamai Media Services Live to support live-to-VOD and live clipping, which is part of Akamai Connected Cloud to support secure and efficient streaming at massive scale across Akamai’s global content delivery network (CDN).

Customers who run Bitmovin’s Live Encoder on Akamai will also benefit from pre-integrated third-party solutions for their video streaming workflows, including Videon’s LiveEdge contribution encoders, Grass Valley’s Agile Media Processing Platform (AMPP) for live production, Zixi for secure transport and ingest; EZDRM for multi-DRM and content encryption; Yospace for Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI), and more.

“Our Live Encoder elevates live streaming, eliminating sub-par image and audio quality so audiences can enjoy truly immersive live experiences,” said Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin, “It’s a huge honor to announce our Live Encoder is running on Akamai Cloud Computing, which will help organizations of every size accelerate the quality of their live streaming workflows and deliver world-class viewing experiences.”