Hostworks improves video delivery with Blue Coat appliances

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 28 June 2011 08:53

Business IT - Networking

Hosting company, Hostworks, has deployed Blue Coat's ProxySG appliances with Blue Coat's Optimised Video Delivery technology to optimise the delivery of video as part of its content delivery service.

According to Blue Coat, its technology enables Hostworks - a subsidiary of Broadcast Australia - to scale the delivery of digital content for Australia's broadcasters and websites without requiring additional bandwidth or web servers. (Hostworks counts nine of the eleven major Australian broadcasters and corporate media organisations among its clients).

"With the Blue Coat stream-splitting technology, a single video stream from a Hostworks media server can serve thousands of viewers, providing a quality user experience and reducing the demand for Internet bandwidth," Blue Coat says.

"For video on demand, the Blue Coat solution allows Hostworks to serve content instantly to a large number of users directly from its video caches rather than each request having to be served from the Hostworks media servers."

It adds: "With the Blue Coat solution, Hostworks can provide cost stability for its large media and broadcasting customers regardless of consumer demand. This cost uniformity allows Hostworks to deliver cost-effective, innovative solutions, including Internet TV services, which utilise unmetered bandwidth and are provided to customers at no charge by ISPs."

Blue Coat's Optimised Video Delivery product is claimed to include the world's first capability to 'stream-split' live Adobe Flash video. It also supports Microsoft Windows Media MMS- and RTSP-based streaming media.

Adrian Britton, Hostworks' general manager of strategy, technology and innovation, said: "Blue Coat has improved the performance of our existing services and allowed us to create new services to help our customers accelerate content and improve availability all in the face of unprecedented consumer demand."