Macquarie Hosting does deal with Switch Media to support video-on-demand growth

Staff Writers
Thursday, 19 February 2009 16:53

IT Industry - Market

Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom, has signed a hosting deal with Australian Internet TV company, Switch Media, to provide a high availability hosting solution required to support Switch Media's mission critical video-on-demand and video content management applications.

Macquarie Hosting announced today that, under the deal, the applications are accessed by all Switch Media customers including Fairfax Media, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the Australian Government and INSEAD, the International Business School. Macquarie said the applications would be used to deliver rich content such as video, webcasts and e-learning applications across multiple digital platforms to customers.
 
According to Macquarie, for the ABC, content is captured and edited by Switch Media before being uploaded for consumer access via the ABC's iView program, with upload able to occur within minutes of the content appearing on free-to-air TV.

Macquarie said the Macquarie Hosting partnership formed part of Switch Media's plans to grow its services in the Australian and Asia Pacific markets and to capitalise on increased take-up of Internet TV services.
 
Macquarie also said that, according to a report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, industry experts believed IPTV or Internet TV, the primary channel through which video-on-demand is delivered, would become a mainstream reality in as little as 18 months to three years time.
 
"There is no question that Internet TV will become ubiquitous as electronics manufacturers, broadcasters and content providers all scramble to develop the means for audiences to access and consume this content as quickly and comfortably as possible," said Christopher Stenhouse, Chief Executive, Switch Media.

"A significant market opportunity exists for Switch Media to be the provider of choice in this space but only if we can deliver the guaranteed smooth and reliable viewing experience our customers' audiences expect.

“Switch Media recognised that to maintain high network reliability for its existing customers and prepare for the inevitable growth in data volume that future customers would create, it required a more robust end to end hosted communications solution.
 
“The solution Macquarie Hosting developed met these needs, providing proactive monitoring and management from the TV aerial to the servers and Internet pipes.”