NAB 2019: CenturyLink Expands Cloud-Based and OTT Services with Google Cloud, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Streamroot

CenturyLink (Booth SU5515) has announced a series of moves that expand its cloud-based media and OTT services. Its Vyvx suite of fiber-based broadcast services now provides secure, high-performance connectivity into Google Cloud Platform (GCP). CenturyLink’s cloud connectivity and services portfolio now includes IBM Cloud Object Storage platform. And a global agreement with Streamroot provides peer-to-peer networking solutions that can be used in combination with CenturyLink’s content delivery network; called CenturyLink CDN Mesh Delivery, the platform leverages a software-based mesh network to easily manage peak traffic loads.

Vyvx Cloud Connect and Google Cloud Platform
Vyvx Cloud Connect provides broadcasters, studios, and stadium venues a path for getting live and linear video in and out of the cloud. Programmers can deliver full-time channels, as well as live event content directly to GCP, to support simple and reliable broadcast-quality workflows in the cloud. This service routes, protects and monitors customers’ broadcast streams, providing multi-region, diverse connectivity paths to GCP.

“OTT platforms, broadcasters and gaming companies need a high availability, low latency network solution to deliver their live events and linear programming to cloud service providers for encoding, packaging and delivery to their CDNs,” said Bill Wohnoutka, VP, global internet and content delivery services, CenturyLink. “CenturyLink’s Vyvx Cloud Connect enables our customers to leverage a managed, monitored and secure private network path to reach GCP, enabling cloud-based workflows.”

The service connects directly to Google Cloud’s infrastructure, providing access to a wide array of products and services in the GCP ecosystem.

Vyvx Cloud Connect offers multi-site, diverse connectivity paths into GCP. This is a fully managed and monitored Vyvx service to the demarcation point into GCP. Vyvx customers can also use this service for their own virtual private cloud (VPC) environments.

IBM Cloud Object Storage
With the addition of the IBM Cloud Object Storage option, CenturyLink can offer media and entertainment companies a more scalable, highly available, and secure way to improve the management and delivery of their content globally. As media viewership grows and people increasingly prefer to consume entertainment on mobile devices, media and entertainment companies are rethinking how they can support and deliver greater volumes of high-quality content to customers worldwide. With reports indicating CDNs will carry 72% of internet traffic by 2022, the need for a hybrid cloud approach that includes cloud-based storage and workflows to support that growth has spiked.

IBM Cloud Object Storage offers CenturyLink customers a centralized, resilient, scalable solution so they can be confident in their ability to manage and move content securely and at high-speed. It can handle content libraries of virtually any size for seamless management and delivery, which is particularly important to media and entertainment companies that need to rapidly move and manage large, complex and sensitive data.

“Providing high-performance, geographically-diverse origin storage is critical to achieving great user experiences when attempting to reach global audiences – particularly when it comes to serving fast-growing regions like Latin America and Asia-Pacific,” said Wohnoutka. “IBM Cloud Object Storage combined with CenturyLink’s rapidly expanding global CDN footprint offers our customers a scalable, highly-available and resilient option to improve user experience for content delivery globally.”

Today’s news builds on CenturyLink’s decision last year to deliver secure, dedicated, and private network connectivity to the IBM Cloud through CenturyLink Cloud Connect solutions.

“The media and entertainment industry faces unique challenges today in the way content is consumed and the sheer volume of data that must be transferred at any moment,” said Phil Buckellew, GM, IBM Cloud Object Storage and Databases. “With the integration of IBM Cloud Object Storage, CenturyLink can now offer its customers even more options in how they move and manage their data across environments. This kind of hybrid cloud approach is critical as they look to keep pace with booming viewership and shifting preferences.”

CenturyLink CDN Mesh Delivery
CenturyLink CDN Mesh Delivery combines the benefits of a global content-delivery network with the resilience and scalability of a distributed mesh architecture.

“The popularity of live events and the propensity for popular content to attract massive internet audiences on day and date releases is necessitating the adoption of new technologies to address peak traffic demands for OTT platforms, broadcasters and gaming companies,” said Wohnoutka. “By integrating Streamroot’s peer-to-peer assisted CDN technology into our media-delivery platform, CenturyLink can offer customers an advantage in their drive to deliver the highest quality user experiences globally.”

CenturyLink’s new mesh delivery platform intelligently sources video content from both a CDN and a mesh network of devices watching the same stream. This allows for rapid scalability and resiliency, even within hard-to-reach markets.

“Streamroot’s work with CenturyLink demonstrates once more that the future of OTT streaming belongs to hybrid delivery,” said Pierre-Louis Théron, CEO/co-founder, Streamroot. “The combination of CenturyLink’s world-class CDN with Streamroot’s proven peer-to-peer technology provides broadcasters a robust and scalable OTT delivery solution, and ushers in a new standard for large-scale video delivery to audiences around the world.”