Alcatel-Lucent has finally integrated its video story with a partnership with thePlatform to create a broad, multi-screen and multi-service, streaming video system. The move is likely in response to the rapid development of video project determination we’ve seen in our surveys of network operators.
The “trial marriage” is logical for both parties. Alcatel-Lucent has a CDN (Velocix) but lacks the streaming ecosystem thePlatform can provide, and thePlatform lacks a CDN and a strong link to the network. A complete strategy seems critical given the expected trial timing; it’s going to be hard to put together a cohesive story without all the pieces, and an effective linkage between Velocix and thePlatform could really help Alcatel-Lucent with its positioning. Since virtually every content project we’ve seen is rooted in the CDN simply because that’s where most of the critical components lie, thePlatform gets a big boost too.
One concern I have about the story is its seeming laser focus on the “TV Everywhere” story, which is only a part of the picture. Most network operators worldwide don’t have multi-channel video offerings today and thus have little or no drive to extend them. It’s likely that the focus arises from the timing of the announcement with a cable show and the fact that (obviously) cable TV players have a major desire to support multi-screen extensions to their traditional business.
It’s not yet clear just how this whole thing is going to go together, but if we eventually get enough detail on the structure we’ll try to harmonize it with our own benchmark content monetization framework, which we’re publishing for the first time in Netwatcher later this month.
Content monetization is the operators’ top new revenue priority, but two others are also close in their support and actually a bit ahead in terms of timing. One is mobile/behavioral optimization of services and the other is cloud computing. Interestingly, all three of these are to a degree converging—or forcing a convergence—in the service layer. Operators in major market areas are looking at cloud hosting as a framework for creating SaaS partnerships to offer services to consumers, SMBs, and enterprises. They’re also realizing that multi-screen means mobile screen in most cases, and that supporting mobile LBS and behavior-linked services is likely to require infrastructure that’s more like web hosting than like SDPs and IMS. Alcatel-Lucent’s content announcement had a little cloud flavor to it and not surprisingly some mobile flavor as well, and this reflects the truth that operators aren’t going to build siloed service layers to support converged networks.