Kontiki bolsters digital media delivery
Grid Delivery gains streaming, multicasting capabilities
Aiming to slice costs associated with sending video and digital media over enterprise networks and the Internet, Kontiki on Monday rolled out several enhancements to its Grid Delivery technology.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s grid software is designed to tap unused bandwidth in existing enterprise servers, computers, and networking infrastructure to create a high performance network capable of supporting video, large files, and software distribution.
One new feature in the technology, dubbed Grid Streaming, lets video or audio be streamed and saved for viewing at a later time. The addition of Grid Streaming enables on-demand delivery of digital media, according to Mark Szelenyi, director of enterprise marketing at Kontiki.
Grid Streaming “gives you an immediate playback option,” he said. Furthermore, the feature adds flexibility for content providers and end-users, Szelenyi said.
According to Lawrence Orans, principal analyst at Gartner in Stamford, Conn., grid delivery technology is a good way to deliver digital content or streamed files out to mobile users and enterprise desktops. The Grid Streaming feature in particular is compelling because it allows a user to view a video stream while it is downloading, he said.
“Instead of waiting for it to completely download and then watching it you can watch it while downloading. That is useful especially for a lengthly stream,” Orans said.
Another improvement to the technology is gained through the addition of Grid Multicasting, which allows a single piece of content to be delivered to many users on a local network automatically, thereby minimizing traffic on WAN links, according to Kontiki officials.
Seeking to tap less expensive bandwidth available on local networks, the Cost Optimized Routing feature uses rules to find the least expensive link through which to route digital media, Szelenyi said.
“Because of the extreme redundancy of the Delivery Grid, [providing] so many sources for content, it lets you use some cheaper bandwidth in data centers knowing you don’t have to rely on that bandwidth exclusively. This can reduce the overall cost of connections,” he said.
Attempting to bring grid delivery into existing enterprise applications, Kontiki also announced new integrations with Microsoft desktop and server products. Embeddable Active X control allows integration with Internet Explorer and Outlook, thereby letting videos and other digital content types be accessed and played on Web pages or within applications without a separate download, Kontiki officials said.
Other integrations include Windows Media Rights Manager, Content Management Servers, and Windows Media 9. In addition, the Grid Delivery system now features support for Microsoft Producer, all Microsoft OSes, and Windows Server 2003, which is set to be unveiled later this week.
