Kaltura: Powering Video Experiences

Video is booming—it is the favorite data type for communication, collaboration, teaching and learning, marketing, and entertainment.” The irrefutable statement came from Ron Yekutiel, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kaltura as he revealed the pervasiveness of video across industries. “EC=MC. No, I’m not talking about Physics. It’s a simple equation that says Every Company today is a Media Company. And, video is becoming a part of every website,” he adds.

Albeit every brand today is aware of the perks a video can usher, not all of them can grasp as to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. With growing use cases and increased penetration in workflows and experiences, video is highly complex to manage, administrate, deliver, search and analyze. Nearly a decade and a year ago, when YouTube was gaining steam, the entrepreneurs Yekutiel and three of his friends—Michal Tsur, Shay David, and Eran Etam—conceived their brainchild Kaltura to assist enterprises break-free from this conundrum. The firm’s panorama appears as a marriage of YouTube and Wikipedia, fostering the idea of peer production in the video landscape.

Today, Kaltura’s Online Video Platform (OVP) and Video Platform as a Service (VPaaS) empower over 300,000 companies and websites for creating value with video.

The Free-spirited Collaboration

Since its genesis in 2006, Kaltura has been in line with the steadfast commitment to pluralism, collaboration, and openness. The open, flexible design of the company has remained intact over the years.

To begin with, Kaltura’s custom applications, management tools, customized workflows, out-of-the-box features, and integrations allow customers to jumpstart their video strategy and meet business needs, almost instantly. Kaltura’s portfolio of online video solutions includes OTT TV (Over the Top TV), OVP (Online Video Platform), EdVP (Education Video Platform), and EVP (Enterprise Video Platform), beefed up with content management capabilities encompassing a broad spectrum of use-cases. Taking a fast ride on the surge of video production, the firm’s open source OVP is leveraged by renowned media companies for effective video publishing, management, syndication, and monetization.

Yekutiel says, “In order to ensure that video is a first-class data type, Kaltura continues to drive innovation and momentum in two main areas—convergence and openness.” In the context of convergence, the firm garners content from varied video sources and inputs, be it personal capture or first-class live events. From video portals, enterprise system screens to smart devices and digital signage, Kaltura delivers video workflows and contexts to a vast range of video endpoints.

In addition to this, the firm’s open APIs, Open Video Capture format and Caliper analytics are fostering openness in the world of video technology allowing utmost flexibility to users.

Through Kaltura’s VPaaS, companies allow ingestion, acquisition and delivery to/from multiple devices, asset management, cloud broadcasting, cloud recording, cloud transcoding, live clipping, along with analysis of content, interaction, viewership, trends, and more. Customers also exercise the benefit of choosing from the three—SaaS, on-prem or on the cloud—deployment options.

With a resolve to enable any video to reach any user on any device anywhere, Kaltura assists media companies, enterprises, education, and OTT operators and service providers in creating robust, secure, and reliable media workflows and experiences. Unlike a simple OVP, Kaltura’s flexible, cloud-based platform, rich media CMS, and video-centric portals assist broadcasters and digital publishers in media management and delivery—from soup to nuts. Kaltura leverages a broad set of cloud platforms to reinforce applications with a full layer of video capabilities.

That’s not all. With the firm’s powerful distribution and syndication services, reaching audience across the web is a breeze. The firm’s market leading distribution and built-in SEO tools, with a single click, allow video distribution to multiple destinations and ensure public videos are indexed by search engine giants automatically. In addition to this, Kaltura’s technology also assists media companies to monetize on any device by inserting ads in all videos and live streams, along with assessing ads served, CTR, and total video streams.

The ‘Lego Box’ Approach

Throwing more light on the application of video in multiple business verticals, Yekutiel states that the underlying theme of openness and flexibility is same everywhere. Illustrating a clear picture of Kaltura’s flexible solutions, Yekutiel admits drawing the inspiration from Lego that started with Lego pieces and eventually forayed into creating diverse applications from the pieces. Kaltura’s myriad of products is fueled by API-driven “lego box” approach that seamlessly extends, customizes, and integrates video capabilities without any additional investment. This hybrid delivery architecture, coupled with numerous technology integrations and strong support for APIs, is what makes Kaltura a true innovator in the video platform market.

From Web to OTT

It was 2014, when media companies started to jump onto the bandwagon of OTT. Riding ahead of peers, Kaltura embraced the trend to enhance and personalize user experience. The firm offers end-to-end OTT TV solutions for any business model. The firm’s proven solutions offer quick time-to-market for launching an OTT platform. Recently, Kaltura worked in close partnership with Viacom18 Media, one of the fastest growing entertainment networks in India, to power the client’s newly launched digital VOD service VOOT. Besides allowing them to add advanced monetization options across multiple devices and platforms, Kaltura assisted Viacom18 in delivering the best-in-class personalized viewing experience, including advanced content discovery, an intelligent recommendation engine, favorites, and watch lists. According to Yekutiel, the firm’s OTT DNA facilitates more flexibility and attributes, like advanced analytics, something that traditional players in the market struggle to deliver.

“Been-there-done-that”

Born in Israel—the virtual extension of Silicon Valley, Kaltura started its ambitious journey as a startup catering to diverse niches. The firm’s accomplishment continues to be novel shattering the ceiling of an industry swayed by big players. This is what makes the story of Kaltura more compelling, breaking the barriers in the realm of video technology. For other startups aiming at the unicorn territory, Kaltura’s rise as a microcosm in the video technology space is nothing less than awe-inspiring.

Kaltura started with web publishing for media companies with a vision to power their web environments. Eventually, the firm clawed its way up to enterprises and schools with tools for learning, collaboration, training, and communication. With 120,000 members strong open source community, Kaltura today is a trusted partner to marquee customers like Groupon, Bank of America, Harvard, and HBO.

"The firm’s OTT DNA facilitates more flexibility and attributes, like advanced analytics, something that traditional players in the market struggle to deliver"

The fact that Kaltura has been cited as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management, demonstrates Kaltura as a beast of a company in the video technology industry. Recently, the firm joined the club of pioneer U.S. companies to comply with the new EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. “Privacy is of the utmost importance to Kaltura as a company that provides SaaS solutions to some of the largest organizations around the world. We’re proud to join this international effort to protect people’s personal data online,” states Yekutiel.

Considering the catapulting popularity of video, Kaltura’s strategic DNA and radical scalability is poised for infusing creativity and innovation in the mechanism of delivering video experience. In the days to come, working in tandem with the on-going trends, Kaltura looks forward to serve the market achieving ‘the de facto standard in the world of video’.