Flumotion Offers Instant Streaming Services Setup

Businesses of any size can now stream live and on demand in less than five minutes thanks to affordable streaming service packs

Barcelona(21 Jun 2010)

Online video continues with its monumental growth and popularity fuelled by social networks and sharing. Facebook is now the second biggest referral source for YouTube, second only to Google. Small and medium sized businesses are taking advantage of online video by making it an integral part of their digital strategies. Leading online video specialists Flumotion have seen streaming requests from small and medium companies triple in 2009.

In order to meet this growing demand, Flumotion has developed and launched new affordable live and on demand streaming services that are instantly setup online. "Professional streaming services should no longer be a privilege for large businesses. Our goal is to democratise online video and to make it affordable for any business", says Flumotion Co-founder and CEO, Jean-Noël Saunier. "Online video is becoming a requirement for businesses, just like having a website and social media presence", explains Saunier. Worldwide availability and optimal quality is guaranteed thanks to partnerships with leading telcos (Tier1) such as NTT Europe Online, Telefónica and British Telecom.

46% watch as much online video as they do television

A recent YouGov study commissioned by RealNetworks shows that nearly half of 18 to 25 year olds spend as much time consuming online video as they do watching TV. A third even prefers the computer for watching television and video. This clearly illustrates that companies who fail to include online video in their business strategies risk losing audience and enable others to create a competitive advantage.

Flumotion has provided live and on demand streaming for international brands and major events. Among them, a fashion show by MANGO, the presentation of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009 and a speech from Creative Commons Founder, Lawrence Lessig, from Harvard Law School. Video is now an integral part of any successful social media strategy, as highlighted by Flumotion's latest live streaming for MANGO, who have 500,000 Facebook followers in 93 countries. The fashion company wanted to give their Facebook fans the option to watch and interact with their latest fashion show in real time.

Streaming from 149 Euros democratises online video

"We provide the top companies and broadcasters with streaming services, but have realised that there is a huge potential of providing packaged services to smaller companies", explains Flumotion Store Manager, Fernando Fumagalli. "Our new offering enables companies of any size to contract, pay and configure a streaming service within minutes", adds Fumagalli. These new service packs are only available online in the Flumotion Store, which automates payment and configuration of the service. This automated process reduces administrative costs and allows Flumotion to pass on these savings to clients.

Flumotion's new streaming services come in seven different packs that are competitively priced and easy to configure, eliminating the need for contracting costly infrastructure and bandwidth separately. The basic ‘On Demand' pack costs as little as 149 Euros per month and includes 500 Gb of traffic, which is equivalent to viewing a five minute video 25,000 times, at a quality of 512 Kbps. The service pack for setting up a ‘Live Event' costs 499 Euros, which includes 200 Gb traffic, enough for a two hour event streamed to 600 concurrent viewers, at a quality of 350Kbps. For longer events or more viewers additional backup traffic can be contracted. All packs include the Flumotion Media Console, a tool for the effective management of content and analysing statistics. Traffic consumption alerts can be enabled and therefore, videos adapted user behaviour based on statistics.

About Flumotion

Flumotion is an award winning streaming software company that was founded in 2006 by a group of open source developers and multimedia experts. They developed an open source multi-format video streaming software, closing the gap of competing industry standards and making streaming more accessible.

Flumotion Streaming Software allows broadcasters and companies to stream content live and on demand in all the leading formats from a single server. Flumotion also offers a Streaming Platform and WebTV, which reduce workflow and costs by covering the entire streaming value chain. This end-to-end yet modular solution includes signal acquisition, encoding, multi-format transcoding, streaming of contents and state-of-the art interface design. The media back office allows for advanced content management and optimal monetisation through rich media advertising.

Flumotion was awarded 'Best Streaming Innovation' by industry leading Streaming Media Magazine. Companies such as Cuatro, Nestlé and Antena 3 trust Flumotion with the delivery of their high value content. Flumotion?s scalable and cost effective technology enables telcos and hosting companies worldwide to create their own end-to-end video and audio streaming platforms. Partners include NTT Europe Online, Telefonica and British Telecom.

More info at http://www.flumotion.com and in the streaming blog of Flumotion.