A number of companies from the online video ecosystem have announced their intention to jointly form the Streaming Video Alliance.
The alliance members, comprised of a variety of industry leaders from the entire online video value chain and open to all companies from all sectors, include: Alcatel-Lucent, Charter Communications, Cisco, Comcast, EPIX, Fox Networks Group, Korea Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Liberty Global, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Qwilt, Telecom Italia, Telstra, Ustream, Wowza Media Systems and Yahoo!.
Interestingly, two of the biggest forces in streaming video are absent from the list, Netflix and YouTube, even though they are the biggest drivers of streaming online video traffic.
The group identified three initial areas of focus: open architecture, to define specifications for network and cloud-based streaming and caching infrastructure; quality of experience, to create a common approach to defining, measuring, optimizing and reporting quality of the video streaming; and interoperability, to create standards for streaming video.
“In light of this extraordinary demand for and shift to online video consumption, many industry members have come together to begin to foster collaboration on a new open architecture and ensure online video will continue to flourish. The hope is that companies throughout the ecosystem will join this effort to develop a multi-faceted solution that works for all elements of the ecosystem,” the new association said in a statement.
