Verimatrix has announced the acquisition of Comvenient GmbH, the Munich-based conditional access specialist, once a part of Leo Kirch’s BetaResearch.
The two companies have been long-term partners in the development of the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS). Verimatrix says it admires the Comvenient approach to what it calls “traditional CA technologies” – the smart card solution against which the software-based Verimatrix has previously railed – and says it will now help the company penetrate the DVB market.
Verimatrix CEO Tom Munro told Broadband TV News that the acquisition would complete the picture that was begun when the two companies began to work together two years ago. “We gain some really smart people and an extension to our customer list, adding over 100 customers to our roster, which brings our list to more than 400 customers,” he said.
Munro
Munro said the company did not see over-the-top delivery and traditional broadcast delivery as separate threads and that the combined company would have the opportunity to do both. “One of the big motivators for us is that we have not seen an RFP in the past year that didn’t include multiscreen or internet delivery on top of it, but it’s on top of something and we’re strong believers that the meat of that business will not come from new names and disrupters, but from the established pay-TV operators adding it as a component technology to an already successful service.”
Munro said there were opportunities when operators converted to digital, or transitioned from standard to high definition or MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. “We’ve been very successful at selling the Comvenient direct product within the VCAS architecture, I think it’s now about achieving shorter product cycles and delivering to market more quickly.”
“We’ve been able to strategically blend highly complementary technologies and expertise areas,” said Hubert Kukla, CEO of Comvenient, who has been appointed as EVP Strategic Initiatives for Verimatrix “The integration of our DVB solution within the VCAS product range has proven to be a natural fit for operators with large scale mix of hybrid and broadcast networks.”
Comvenient was formed in 2003 following the collapse of the Kirch media empire. The Betacrypt technology that sat in the original dbox receivers has now been improved and enhanced to the extent that the company can now boast the supply of advanced DVB conditional access systems to more than 100 operators. Most recently in December, Betacrypt 2 was selected by the Orbit Satellite Network.
