Viaccess is to fully merge its operations with Orca Interactive, the middleware and content discovery business it acquired four years ago. Since the €13.9 million purchase, Orca has been a wholly owned subsidiary of security specialist Viaccess, which is itself 100% owned by France Telecom.
The new entity will be known as Viaccess-Orca and will be led by Francois Moreau de Saint Martin. Former Orca CEO Haggai Barel will be his deputy.
In a Broadband TV News interview, Moreau de Saint Martin said the company wanted to merge both backgrounds in terms of names and brands – and had great assets to work with. “Market trends have seen a strong development of over-the-top projects and if you look at that there are clearly consequences in terms of our product.” Moreau de Saint Martin added that the big change had been in multiscreen devices, which meant the operator no longer purchased products in the way they once did.
This has led to the restoration of the integration approach and the restoration of the ‘best of breed’ philosophy. Moreau de Saint Martin said this would not change until the market has reached a higher level of maturity.
The company has been reorganized internally with departmental mergers taking place across the board.
Viaccess-Orca now brings in a variety of technologies that include TV Everywhere, HbbTV, conditional access and DRM system, content delivery and content discovery platforms, as well as companion screen applications.
In March it was announced that France Telecom was in the process of migrating its entire Orange IPTV installed base of 5.1 million subscribers to Viaccess and Orca’s Unified Platform.
