Envivio Courts The Cloud

Looking to expand its product portfolio and revenue-making potential, Envivio has launched “Nuage,” a virtualized, cloud-based video platform that’s designed to get multiscreen video services spooled up in a matter of days.

Known mostly for multiscreen encoding, Envivio’s new software-as-a-service offering aims to significantly broaden the vendor’s capabilities and comes in response to customer demands, company president and CEO Julien Signès said, noting that the new cloud-based offer, delivered via Amazon Web Services, will complement content that Envivio serves up from private clouds.

“Some bigger operators want a hybrid solution,” Signès said. “We can run on-premises or the cloud, or both. We’ll make that transparent to the end user.”

He said Nuage also aims to ease multiscreen complexities and lower costs for partners in part because it avoids the need to separately integrate support for myriad devices, streaming standards and content protection platforms.

Nuage is designed to support both live and on-demand premium-quality video, including content that is formatted for 4K/Ultra HD.

Envivio hasn’t announced any public cloud customers yet, but there’s one unnamed “major operator”  in Europe that is already using a hybrid approach that works with Envivio at the headend and via the cloud, Signès said. Comcast and Time Warner Cable are among the vendor’s known multiscreen clients in the U.S.

Envivio’s new product set will put the company in closer competition with vendors that specialize in online video publishing, including Ooyala (being acquired by Telstra), Comcast-owned thePlatform, and, in some circumstances, Brightcove.

The company will look for Nuage to generate new growth opportunities. Envivio posted first quarter revenues of $8.4 million, up 13% from the year-ago period.  Envivio reports second quarter results on Wednesday, Sept. 3.