ROO Group Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: RGRP) announced that it has formed a tripartite business alliance with Abacast, Inc. and Pando Networks, Inc. to offer peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming solutions to its current and future customers. The alliance will provide live streaming and video-on-demand (VoD) through the ROO Media Player. By combining forces with Abacast and Pando, ROO will be able to offer these P2P products as white-label solutions to its global network of customers — increasing streaming quality while reducing associated bandwidth costs.
As part of the agreement, ROO has exclusive access to the technology of Abacast and Pando vis-a-vis certain of its direct competitors. The companies will work with ROO to integrate their respective technologies into the ROO Media Player environment to facilitate a seamless end-user experience — offering both solutions through the single ROO client application.
The alliance is consistent with ROO’s previously announced intentions to create content delivery network (CDN) capabilities for its clients. Through the partnership, Abacast will supply its hybrid P2P/CDN solution for live streaming content while Pando will provide managed P2P distribution services for VoD content. Abacast and Pando have a combined installed base of approximately 62 million individual customers today, which in conjunction with the 1,100+ ROO Media Players currently deployed on the Internet will form the basis of ROO’s newly formed hybrid CDN/P2P content delivery model.
“ROO is committed to providing our customers with the most advanced digital video technologies — whether internally developed or externally sourced. P2P is the most efficient way to transmit rich media or bandwidth- intensive content to a broad base of end-users, and we feel that Pando and Abacast represent the best-of-breed solutions available in the market,” said Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, chairman and chief executive officer of ROO Group. “This alliance allows ROO to focus on its key strengths and justifies our recent decision to terminate our internal R&D in the P2P arena.”
“ROO’s continued growth, both measured by aggregation of high quality video content and by the installed base of the ROO Media Player, gives Abacast a great opportunity to increase the deployment of our hybrid P2P technology on a global scale,” said Michael King, chief executive officer of Abacast, Inc.
“This is a very exciting three-way partnership, which allows Pando to focus on its expertise in file transfer technology while becoming part of a holistic solution for global web-based video delivery,” said Robert Levitan, chairman and chief executive officer of Pando Networks. “As the boom in online video usage continues, we wanted to be part of a team that can meet any corporate customer’s needs. ROO, Pando and Abacast form that team.”
The companies will immediately enter a technical integration phase, with live customer deployments of the combined solution expected by the end of the first quarter.
Investors in Pando include BRM Capital, Wheatley Partners and Intel Capital.
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55% annually for the past five years, driven by major customer deployments for contribution and distribution applications in the Mobile TV, Internet TV and IPTV markets. Envivio has also completed the expansion of its senior management team with the appointments of John McAdoo as Chief Financial Officer and Richard Stanfield as Chief Operating Officer.
