Haivision Acquires KulaByte and MontiVision
Traditionally known for distributing video within the enterprise, Montreal-based Haivision Network Video is stepping out beyond corporate firewall by acquiring Texas-based KulaByte and Germany-based MontiVision, who developed key components of KulaByte's computer and cloud-based technologies. Announced on July 21, 2011, the privately held Haivision did not disclose financial details.
With the new technologies, Haivision officials explained that the company can now offer a end-to-end solution that includes hardware, software, and cloud-based encoding; secure live and on-demand distribution and stream management within the enterprise; with RTMP, RTSP, HTTP and HLS-based external distribution over the Internet. To leverage this opportunity, Haivision will form a new Internet Media Division led by Chafye Nemri as executive vice president, with former KulaByte CEO Peter Forman serving as vice president of internet media, responsible for developing the division's cloud services.
Haivision was formed in 2004 from private investment and has grown at over a 50 percent compound annual growth rate over the last five years, including three previous acquisitions. Prior to this acquisition, the company had four main products; hardware encoders and codecs, intelligent digital signage, intelligent IP video, and players, decoders and STBs. Haivision sold primarily into the enterprise, medical, military, educational, house of worship, church, sports and entertainment and OEM markets.
KulaByte was founded in 2004, and started by developing what ultimately became the KulaByte XStream server, a high-performance software encoder that delivers streams via RTMP and HLS, and has been used to stream events like the Masters, the recent Royal Wedding and Nobel prize ceremonies, by customers like ABC, CBS, Fox Sports, IBM, Speedtv.com, and the U.S. Army. More recently, KulaByte released HyperStream Live, a cloud-based encoder that can ingest a single encoded stream and re-encode and/or transmux for adaptive delivery via Flash, RTSP, and HLS.
MontiVision was founded in 2003, and delivers development kits and services that help Kulabyte and other companies integrate video into applications for video acquisition and encoding, surveillance, and medical imaging applications. MontiVision also boasts an extensive client list including vertical market solutions providers and top education and research facilities globally.
One slide shown during the press briefing illustrated the synergies provided by the acquisitions. As you can see below, the acquired technologies enable Haivision to provide a comprehensive range of encoding, management, and distribution services to their enterprise and broadcast customers.
In discussing the acquisitions, Mirko Wicha, president and CEO of Haivision, was clearly jazzed both about his company's progress to date and the value of the newly acquired technologies.
"With four successful acquisitions in the last two years, we've proven ourselves to be not only agile but also a very effective company focused on one simple mission -- delivering video to every eyeball on the planet. Now we have the companies and technologies to do it," Wicha said.
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