British Sky Broadcasting Extends Agama Quality Assurance with OTT Service Monitoring for Sky Go and NOW TV

Sky expands its existing monitoring solution from Agama to also ensure that its OTT services are always available with the right quality, thereby improving the end-user experience.

Linköping, Sweden(08 Jul 2014)

Agama Technologies, the video service quality assurance expert, today announced that British Sky Broadcasting Limited (Sky), the UK and Ireland’s leading home entertainment and communications company, has extended its Agama DTV Monitoring Solution deployment to also cover its over-the-top (OTT) service playout.

Sky has two OTT services: Sky Go, a TV Everywhere multiscreen offer for its DTH subscribers; and, NOW TV, a standalone OTT streaming product targeting users from a completely new customer segment. To be able to increase understanding and control of this service distribution, Sky has expanded its existing monitoring solution from Agama, allowing the company to also ensure that its adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming services are always available with the right quality, thereby improving the end-user experience.

Vlad Korotkov, Senior Design Engineer Emerging Technologies at Sky, says: “At Sky we are committed to offering our customers high-quality content and the best quality TV experience possible. The Agama solution provides crucial insights to improve and ensure our OTT service delivery platform, which supports us in delivering a high-quality experience and service to our customers.”

Mikael Dahlgren, CEO at Agama Technologies, adds: “We’re proud to be given the reinforced trust from Sky to deliver a monitoring solution for its OTT platform as well; and, we look forward to supporting Sky in exploiting OTT to create new growth opportunities. This deal is an excellent example of how Agama, with a true multiscreen and multiservice capable video quality assurance solution, creates world-class transparency for the new generation of adaptive streaming services, as well as for more traditional delivery mechanisms.”

Sky’s selected solution has its core in the Agama Analyzer OTT Edge and Agama Enterprise Server EX products. The Analyzer OTT Edge is a versatile ABR streaming quality assurance probe for fully automated QoE and QoS monitoring and testing of OTT audio and video services, offering market leading capacity with in-depth analysis of hundreds of concurrent streams. The Enterprise Server EX integrates monitoring information from the Analyzers and correlates, refines and presents it in top-level views that give an unprecedented understanding of when and where quality problems occur, where they begin and whom they affect. It also provides the foundation for sophisticated reporting and advanced analytics.

The Agama DTV Monitoring Solution is an industry-leading solution for providing full transparency of video service distribution from the head-end to the viewing device. It supports TV operators' business processes, across departments and workflows, with actionable insights that help to proactively manage service quality and customer satisfaction, whilst lowering OPEX and improving customer retention.

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About Sky

Sky is the UK and Ireland’s leading home entertainment and communications company.  Around 40% of all homes have a direct relationship with Sky through its range of TV, broadband and home telephony services.

Sky is the UK’s biggest investor in television content, investing more than £2.5 billion a year in channels such as Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Living, Sky Arts, Sky Sports, Sky Movies and Sky News. Around two-thirds of Sky’s content spend is invested in the UK and Sky is the fastest-growing source of investment in original British programmes. More than 30 million people watch Sky content each week.

Alongside its commitment to offering customers a greater choice of high-quality content, Sky is a leading innovator.  Customers enjoy total control and flexibility over their favourite TV through Sky+, watch TV on the move through Sky Go, and enjoy the best quality TV experience at home through High Definition and 3D.

Sky distributes its content broadly over several platforms, including satellite, cable, IPTV, mobile and WiFi. NOW TV, Sky’s second consumer brand, builds on the company’s leadership in internet TV. Sky is also the UK's fastest-growing home communications company and favourite ‘triple-play’ provider of TV, broadband and home phone.

Sky believes in making a wider contribution to the communities in which it operates by taking positive action on the environment, supporting grassroots sports and increasing access to, and participation in, the arts. Sky employs 24,000 people, has annual revenues of £7.2 billion and is estimated to support a £5.9 billion contribution to UK GDP. Sky is listed on the London Stock Exchange (BSY). www.sky.com/corporate

 

About Agama Technologies

Agama Technologies provides next-generation quality assurance and monitoring solutions for digital TV and video services. As the first company to provide complete and proven end-to-end, multi-metric monitoring solutions, Agama continues to pioneer and innovate. TV operators and service providers worldwide rely on the established Agama DTV Monitoring Solution for systematic improvements of service quality and customer satisfaction, whilst lowering operational costs and reducing churn. Agama Technologies AB is based in Linköping, Sweden, and is privately held. For more information, visit www.agama.tv.