Q&A with Olaf Schulz-Forberg, COO ALTUS Media, and Jochen Spangenberg, COO ALTUS Management
Group Structure and Ownership
The ALTUS Group is composed of ALTUS Analytics AG, the parent holding, and ALTUS Management GmbH and ALTUS Media GmbH - the two fully owned subsidiaries and operating units. ALTUS Analytics AG takes holding functions such as general administration, management of personnel, infrastructure, facilities, office management and financial management. ALTUS Management GmbH performs the streaming media and TV strategy advice and consulting services. ALTUS Media GmbH performs the technical streaming webcasting services, manages the streaming media portals and operates All-Streams Interactive.
ALTUS Business Units
ALTUS has four business units:
1. ALTUS streaming media and strategy advice and consulting services, 2. ALTUS technical streaming media services, 3. ALTUS streaming media productions and 4. ALTUS All-Streams Interactive service bureau. Unit 1 is project management and consulting services.
Unit 2 consists of encoding and hosting services, event broadcasting and full production services. Unit 3 is the co-management and launching of audio-visual portals.
Unit 4 is the All-Streams Interactive Service, which brings streaming media to a wider public. It allows users from all over the world to publish audio messages instantly to the Internet from any touch-tone telephone. The service will be opened in 2000. One references among many others:
ALTUS manages the official website of the German Bundesliga - http://www.bundesliga.de on behalf of the German Football Association. On http://www.bundesliga.de ALTUS webcasts all matches of the German Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga live and on-demand in full length. Furthermore, Live-Bundesliga - the Bundesliga cross-media magazine is produced. Live-Bundesliga creates compelling content, aggregates existing content from the clubs and interacts with the fans all around the world in both English and German language.
Streamingmedia.com: Olaf and Jochen, Altus recently launched the website for the German Bundesliga (the national soccer association) with live reports from all games of the first and second Division in Germany. All matches are covered live in German, with two top matches being also covered in English. What makes your solution more attractive than traditional radio or TV sport programs?
Olaf Schulz-Forberg and Jochen Spangenberg: On the one hand it is impossible, at the moment, to follow all matches live on radio and TV.
The situation in radio is as follows: Only a few German broadcasters provide live coverage on local radio (then - if at all - only covering the match of the local team, usually not entire matches). It is thus impossible, for example, for somebody living in Hamburg to listen to entire live matches outside the region, which is covered by his local broadcasting organizations.
In television the following is the case: live coverage of matches on television only takes place on Pay-TV. This is limited to three matches per match day in the first Division, and one match of the second Division. TV coverage of all matches is then available in sports programs, but these are limited to showing highlights - not entire games. This is available only in the German language. ALTUS; however, does not exclude the international audience: we also provide coverage in English, making it possible for a wider audience to participate and be informed about German football, while also increasing the teams' and the sports' popularity abroad.
Q: What is the typical set-up on location and on the consumer end - what kind of access or interface do you provide?
A: For example here a description of a broadcast-situation in case of a live-coverage of a Bundesliga-Soccer-Match: On location we typically have 5 people working for us: 2 photographers, 2 commentators and one reporter doing the newsticker. All data (photos and tickernews) is transmitted to us via the net. The commentary is send to us via so-called ‘ISDN Codecs' (special telephones supporting headset connection and for example mpeg compression etc.). At our headquarter we mix all the audio, add spots and trailers and then encode it via the Real Producer and stream it to 5 Real servers. On the consumer end, all that is needed is a 28k modem Internet access for the audio and video, but if you want to have better video quality we strongly suggest at least an ISDN line or even better DSL. To sum it up, we try hard to supply everyone with the best quality audio / video he can get with his Internet connection.
Q: Altus has a background in consulting. Can you tell the streamingmedia.com readers how the transition into a service and application provider happened?
A: Since the mid-1990s ALTUS core activity was to advise its international customers in Internet-related activities, i.e. aid them turn innovative ideas into reality. In their role as multimedia advisors ALTUS worked with a large number of European broadcasting organizations and advised them on how to exploit the full potential of the Internet, incorporating the possibilities of this (then) new medium into their traditional operations. Having had the know-how and detailed knowledge of the market, it was then decided by the management of Altus to fully use the experiences and contacts that were gained throughout the preceding years: ALTUS set up their own webcasting operations in spring 1999, quickly becoming one of the leading players in Europe. Today, ALTUS is still active in the consulting sector (focusing on full service R&D advice, project design and management), while all webcasting activities are now organized in a wholly owned subsidiary of ALTUS Analytics AG, namely ALTUS Media GmbH.
Q: You offer also business-to-business solution, which you call ‘technical services' and ‘training services'. Altus also developed proprietary solution to support your streaming media services.
A: One of ALTUS` units is entitled "technical services" and performs the live- or on-demand coverage of, among others, press conferences, AGMs (Annual Meetings) etc. The transmission is a broadcast service for anyone who wants or needs it - there is no more project management or another business model behind. A reference for one such event is, for example, the live coverage of Balda AG's AGM which went out live on 12th April (see http://www.balda.de, for more references see http://www.altus.de).
The "training" unit covers events like congresses, further education events, seminars, and so on. Apart from speakers appearing on screen it is possible to link further information sources to the video/audio, for example PowerPoint slides, additional texts etc. This additional information appears in separate windows. This way the user can follow both on his PC screen: speech, presentations of the speaker and supporting information. On top of all that, hyperlinks that guide the user to other relevant or related information sources can be added. For an example of how this can look like see: http://sport.altusmedia.de/business/zanthier/
Q: Can you describe the situation in Germany related to streaming media - be it b-2-b or b-2c? And can you describe your ‘tools' to make it a successful communication platform?
A: There is a large market in Germany for both the b-2-b and b-2-c services. In the b-2-b sector use can be made in particular of audio and video services as Intranets and other broadband solutions already have large bandwidth at their disposal. The b-2-c sector, at the moment, primarily lends itself to audio applications due to the limited amount of bandwidth with which most consumer users are still confronted. However, it is highly likely that bandwidth limitations will soon be a thing of the past and make it possible to deliver all types of content also to consumer users. In the meantime, ALTUS pursues a ‘bottom-up' approach, i.e. deliver the particular type of content in the most appropriate and advisable format in order to reach designated target groups (e.g. low bandwidth encoding for b-2-c services, high bandwidth for b-2-b services).
Q: ‘Karneval der Kulturen' is a grassroots event showing the different cultures living in Berlin. The parade shows multi-cultural aspects be through music, food, dances, traditional costumes etc. This seems to be an ideal project to distribute through the Internet.
A: That is true. We reached a very large audience with coverage of the Carnival of World Cultures - one of the first major events that were covered by ALTUS. It also proved to be a highly complex project, as the action took place in the streets of Berlin (a moving street parade), which required considerable logistic efforts. Following the success, ALTUS has been asked by the organizers to cover this year's parade again. It will take place in June 2000 and interested users can log in and follow the action live on http://www.online-karneval.de(This is also the URL at which last year's event can still be accessed)
Q: Olaf Schulz-Forberg and Jochen Spangenberg, thank you for the interview!