October 15, 2009
By Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen Conference Chair, Streaming Media and CMO, id3as
Featured Articles
For the rest of the Winter 2009 issue of Streaming Media magazine please click here

The Envelope Please: The 2009 Streaming Media European Readers' Choice Award Winners

To say we were pleasantly surprised by the interest inthe inaugural Streaming Media European Readers’Choice Awards would be the understatement of theyear, right up there with "The economy took a bit of a dip,didn’t it?" and "Maybe British MPs shouldn’t include moatcleanings in their expenses."

We’ve had a successful Readers’ Choice Awardsprogram in the U.S. version of our magazine since 2007,but we weren’t sure how well it would go over on thisside of the pond, given that it came less than a year afterwe launched the European edition. Turns out we had noneed to worry. Readers and vendors nominated morethan 200 products and services to be considered, andwhen all was said and done, more than 5,500 total voteswere cast by more than 2,700 readers of the magazineand StreamingMediaGlobal.com.

That shines a spotlight on just how vital and vibrantthe online video (and audio—let’s hear it for internetmusic!) remains, even in the midst of this economic,er, dip. Clearly, people are more excited about onlinemedia than ever, whether from the consumer angle orthe perspective of a technician working a webcastin the field.

Before we get to the winners, here’s a little lookbehind the scenes. In May, we asked readers andvendors to submit their nominations on 12 categories.Once those nominations were sorted—occasionally,products were nominated in an inappropriate categoryand so had to be moved—we posted the nominees onStreamingMedia Global.com and opened voting in July.Voting closed on 21 Aug., giving us time to weed out theobviously bogus email addresses (you know who youare!) before we announced the top three finalists in eachcategory on 7 Sept.

Of our 12 categories, the online video platformcategory received the largest number of bothnominations (26) and votes (1,030). To our surprise, thebest live webcast category pulled in the fewestnominations—eight—while the reporting and analyticscategory garnered the fewest total votes, 290.What was perhaps most heartening about both thenominations and the results was the mix of startups andestablished players, as well as the variety of countriesthey represent. Clearly, no single country dominates theEuropean online video space—and only one winneris based outside of Europe (though it has a strongEuropean presence).

Note that we’ve listed the winner and top two runnersupin each category, along with the percentages of totalvotes each received in that category. And so, withoutfurther ado, here are the 2009 Streaming MediaEuropean Readers’ Choice Award Winners!

Best Live Webcast
Winner: FlyOnTheWall—2009 G20 London Summit (28%)
Runners Up:
Global-MIX—World's First 3D Webcast for Keane (18%)
Highwinds—U.S. Presidential Inauguration (13%)

Best Streaming Innovation
Winner: Flumotion—Flumotion Streaming Software (30%)
Runners Up:
BeBanjo—Sequence (22%)
LiveU—LU-30 Mobile Live Video Uplink Service (7%)

Delivery Network
Winner: Global-MIX—Global Mix CDN (25%)
Runners Up:
Limelight Networks—Limelight Content Delivery Service (15%)
Oversi—OverCache MSP (11%)

Music & Audio Delivery Platform
Winner: I2i Online—Show Me How to Play (59%)
Runners Up:
Glastonbury Broadcasting Ltd.—Glastonbury Radio (17%)
Spotify—Spotify (13%)

Online Video Platform
Winner: StreamCity Ltd.—Magic Publisher (19%)
Runners Up:
Datmedia, Ltd.—Datpresenter (12%)
Vzaar—Vzaar Video Hosting Service for Online Merchants (10%)

Reporting & Analytics
Winner: Nedstat—StreamSense (28%)
Runners Up:Actus Digital—Insight (19%)
Sawmill—Sawmill (17%)

Streaming Services Provider
Winner: FlyOnTheWall—Live and On-Demand Streaming Media Production and Distribution Services (15%)
Runners Up:
Global-MIX—Global-MIX Media Services (12%)
Ipercast—Ipercast Streaming Solutions (11%)

Transcoding Solution
Winner: G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky GmbH—G&L Encoding (17%)
Runners Up:
Digital Rapids—StreamZ/DRC-Stream (11%)
Telestream—Episode Series (6%)Winner: BeBanjo—Sequence (38%)
Runners Up:Ankeena Networks (formerly Nokeena Networks, Inc.)—Media Flow Director (12%)
Snap.tv—SnapTV (8%)

TV Over IP Solution

Winner: Stream UK Media Services—Stream UK Crowdsourcer (31%)
Runners Up
Dailymotion—Dailymotion.com (29%)
Never.no—Community TV (19%)

Video Advert Platform
Winner: SundaySky—Automated Video Solution (39%)
Runners Up:
Videoplaza—Monetizer (27%)
Adswizz SA—Adswizz (20%)

Webcast Platform
Winner: Sonic Foundry—Mediasite (34%)
Runners Up:
Datmedia Ltd.—Datpresenter (24%)
BGA Group—ims*Meeting Software (14%)

User-Generated Content Platform