Cable-Tec Expo: Espial Rolls Cloud-Based Video Platform, Adds Customers

Espial has introduced “Elevate,” a cloud-based, “turnkey” video platform that is underpinned by the company’s recent acquisition of the Arris Whole Home Solution.

Ottawa-based Espial also identified three new customers: Easton Utilities of Easton, Md.; HBC (Hiawatha Broadband Communications of Minnesota);  and Ritter Communications, an operator that serves more than 45,000 business and residential customers in parts of Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri.

With those additions, Espial said its newly-branded Elevate platform is now deployed to more than 40 operators around the world. Other known partners include Shaw Communications, WideOpenWest, Buckeye CableSystem, EastLink, Comporium, Consolidated Communications and Service Electric Cable TV.

The new product branding and set of new customers come about a month after Espial closed its acquisition of Arris’s Whole Home Solution, a software, apps and video navigation platform for set-top boxes that was spawned by Arris’s $20 million purchase of Digeo in 2009. At the time, Espial estimated that the deal would add $7.7 million in annual revenues amid a plan to push forward with new “video-as-a-service” offerings.

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Espial is billing Elevate as a turnkey, IP video transition offering backed by a Network Operations Center and “geo-redundant” cloud data centers, multiscreen user interfaces, and associated apps platforms. Arris is now Espial’s preferred partner for gateways, but Espial is free to work with other hardware partners.

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“We felt that the best path to get more scale with that software solution was to combine it with somebody that's just laser focused on that part of the market. It will be the best thing for our customers and ultimately the best thing for employees,” Bruce McClelland, the new CEO of Arris, said in a recent interview with Multichannel News, said of the reasoning behind the deal (Multichannel News will be running that full interview later this week.).

Espial’s acquisition of Arris’s WHS and launch of Elevate pits Espial against others that are pitching IP transition platforms to operators, including Evolution Digital, Adara Technologies, as well as Comcast, which is now licensing/syndicating its X1 platform to other MSOs, with Cox Communications and Shaw Communications already on board. TiVo, freshly merged with Rovi and a partner with Evolution Digital, is also enabling MVPD partners to pursue next-gen video products.

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Espial said it will be showing off Elevate at the Arris booth (#1074) at this week’s SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Philadelphia.