The List of the 50 Companies That Matter Most in Online Video in 2019
Our panel of streaming media experts has spoken, and these are the 50 companies doing the most important and innovative work in online video today. Read our introduction to learn more about how the list was created. (Note that the Streaming Media 50 list highlights companies with headquarters in the U.S. We will announce our European Streaming Media list on our Streaming Media Europe site in November.)
Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President, and CEO
It’s been fascinating to watch Adobe develop and morph in the last few years, at least as it relates to the streaming video space. Flash is the format that just won’t die, but as it’s ceased being a focus for the company, Adobe’s Primetime has become its crown jewel, reaching more than 99% of all pay-TV households in the U.S.
Tom Leighton, Co-Founder and CEO
It was the first CDN, and it’s the biggest, but it also remains one of the most innovative, continuing to build out its edge network to more than 4,000 locations across the globe and taking a lead on combating cybersecurity breaches and piracy.
Andy Jassy, CEO
If Akamai is king of the edge, then Amazon Web Services is king of the cloud. Add in Prime Video on the consumer side and AWS Elemental on the encoding/transcoding/packaging side, and you’ve got the only company on our list that has offerings for everyone in the world of online video.
Tim Cook, CEO
We don’t usually laud tech companies for their content efforts, and the upcoming AppleTV+ service might be too little, too late. But with content from Hollywood’s biggest names (like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and J.J. Abrams), Apple is clearly swinging for the fences. And with an install base of 1.4 billion devices, the company just might make it work. When’s the last time Apple was the underdog?
Sharon Carmel, Founder and CEO
Beamr continues to reinvent itself, pushing the boundaries of both software-based and now hardware-accelerated encoding, while still maintaining its roots in video optimization and analysis.
Jeff Ray, CEO
2019 has been a bumpy ride for Brightcove. On one hand, it’s restructured its European division, but on the other, it acquired Ooyala’s online video platform (OVP) business, making it one of only two of the original OVPs still standing and keeping it as a force to be reckoned with.
Christopher Levy, Founder and CEO
BuyDRM has been around since almost the beginning of the streaming media industry (it was founded in 2001), and the company has been a tireless advocate for DRM, taking time to educate both the industry and consumers about why it benefits everybody—which is not always an easy task.
Jeff Storey, CEO and President
When CenturyLink acquired Level 3 in 2017, it created a telco-CDN match made in heaven. But it’s the company’s Vyvx Cloud Connect—which connects studios and venues to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud—that keeps it on the Streaming Media 50 this year.
Ken Klaer, EVP
Working closely with Comcast’s advertising division, Comcast Technology Solutions is paving the way in combining the personalization of addressable advertising with the reach of traditional television.
Bill Demas, CEO
If streaming is ever going to become better than broadcast, data and analytics are the key. Conviva was one of the first analytics companies in the online video space, and these days, it works with virtually all the big OTT providers to help them make sure their content and advertising are reaching audiences at the highest possible quality level.
Bret Griess, President and CEO
Monetizing online video gets more complex every day, and CSG has leveraged its experience in other verticals with its Ascendon platform to offer OTT services the flexibility required to stay competitive.
Stephane Roulland, CEO
DaCast has always focused on small and medium-sized businesses (although it works with the big names too) and has pushed to develop APIs to give its customers the ability to customize their solutions.
Kevin Yeaman, President and CEO
Dolby’s not just for cinemas anymore. Its Digital Plus is the state of the art for delivering audiophile-level streaming sound in up to 7.1 channels, while its Hybrik division offers state-of-the-art cloud transcoding and quality control.
Greggory Heil, Founder and CEO
Since introducing cloud encoding and transcoding more than a decade ago, Encoding.com has set the pace in the market, and this year, it introduced Ludicrous HLS, which the company claims can take a 2-hour HD movie and create nine output renditions for HLS in 15 minutes.
David Eisenbacher, Co-Founder and CEO
An innovator in the field of hosted DRM—or, as the company calls it, DRM as a Service (DRMaaS)—EZDRM keeps pushing the limits of the video security market.
Artur Bergman, Founder and CEO
Fastly’s IPO in April disappointed some investors, but analysts are still bullish on the company, and with good reason. The CDN’s approach to edge computing is unique, and its commitment to evangelizing and educating the industry sets it apart.
Sundar Pichai, CEO
Google has its fingers in almost as many segments of the streaming world as Amazon does, and a few that Amazon doesn’t—namely, user-generated content (via YouTube) and advertising. If you watch video online, Google is simply inescapable.
Mirko Wicha, Chairman, President, and CEO
Haivision has been pushing the envelope with its hardware encoders for years, and this year, it introduced the Makito X4, which delivers 4K HEVC at low latency, helped in part by SRT, the transport protocol the company developed and then open-sourced.
Patrick Harshman, President and CEO
Talk about cutting edge: Harmonic took part in the first-ever live 8K broadcast over 5G at the French Open, and it’s involved in some of the first trials of ATSC 3.0 in the U.S.
Stacy Kenworthy, CEO
Lots of hardware companies promise more power and greater efficiency, but HellaStorm is one of the only companies of any kind in our space to really focus on power savings and carbon dioxide reduction. Expect more to follow.
Ginni Rometty, Chair, President, and CEO
From the Watson AI platform to IBM Cloud Video to Aspera Transfer Service, IBM continues to innovate on numerous fronts in the streaming video space.
INXPO (A West Company)
Malcolm Lotzof, CEO
From marketing to corporate communications to live events, INXPO offers solutions for every possible enterprise video need. Now that it’s part of West, it’s got even more resources behind it to make sure customers get what they need.
Dave Otten, Co-Founder and CEO
Already used by hundreds (thousands?) of online video publishers, this year, JW Player added its OTT Apps offering, which creates video apps for Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Android devices.
Ron Yekutiel, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO
Along with Brightcove, Kaltura is one of two of the original online video platforms left standing, and while it remains a leader in education and enterprise video, it’s increased its efforts in media and entertainment too.
Andreas Kisslinger, Founder and CEO
Lightcast.com’s Media Cloud is designed to be a one-stop shop for creating and managing video apps for all devices and platforms, as well as automating workflows. There aren’t many true end-to-end solutions, but this is one of them.
Robert A. Lento, President, CEO, and Director
At IBC 2018, Limelight took the latency challenge head-on, introducing its Limelight Realtime Streaming service, which let attendees see video of themselves streamed from Amsterdam to Los Angeles and back, in less than 1 second. That’s fast!
Jongil Kim, Co-Founder and CEO
The industry’s best-kept secret? Maybe. But you’ll find Media Excel’s HERO encoders in use by telcos, broadcasters, and cable operators everywhere.
Angel Ruiz, CEO
Spun off from Ericsson in 2018, MediaKind introduced the MediaKind Universe soon after and won an IABM BaM Award at NAB 2019 for its multichannel, 6K tiled 360° live stream.
Kumar Subramanian, CEO
To paraphrase an old TV commercial, MediaMelon doesn’t make adaptive bitrate; it makes adaptive bitrate better with its QBR technology. It also offers analytics and CDN routing for a comprehensive quality offering.
Mike Newman, CEO
Led by one of the early innovators in enterprise video (remember Accordent Technologies?), MediaPlatform remains at the forefront of corporate video, from executive town halls to webinars to training.
Satya Nadella, CEO
In the early part of this decade, we noticed a steady stream of video engineers and executives leaving Redmond. In the last few years, many of those same people have come back, and it shows in the advances made by Azure, Stream, and the video AI division.
Jon Dahl, Co-Founder and CEO
Mux has only been around since 2015, but its API-based approach to video encoding, streaming, and quality analytics has quickly made it a leader in the space. And its Demuxed conference has just as quickly become one of the must-attend events in online video.
Oliver Gunasekara, CEO
NGCodec’s FPGA-based encoders are used by Twitch for hardware-based VP9 transcodes, and the company claims to be able to deliver 30% better compression than other hardware-based encoders. They must be doing something right; in July, FPGA inventor Xilinx acquired the company.
Eric Burns, CEO
Panopto emerged as one of the leaders in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management, and with good reason: The company has always leveraged a deep understanding of both the corporate and education video spaces.
Claudio Lisman, President and CEO
For both live and file-based media management workflows, Primestream has long been a pacesetter. Its new Review Hub steps up the game for collaborative content review and approvals.
Vern Hanzlik, President and CEO
Another leader in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management, Qumu supplies cloud, on-prem, and hybrid corporate video solutions to some of the biggest companies in the world.
Chris Allen, CEO and President
Low latency? How about sub-500 millisecond latency to more than a million viewers? That’s what Red5 Pro achieves with a combination of edge computing, clusters of virtual instances in the cloud, and WebRTC.
Mark Bonney, Executive Chairman
After a few years adrift, SeaChange has found its sea legs (sorry, we couldn’t resist) by offering its suite of media asset management, ad management, and analytics solutions for set-top boxes, smart TVs, and mobile devices in product, managed service, and SaaS form.
Michael Norregaard, CEO
The Mediasite lecture capture hardware is how Sonic Foundry made its name, but in recent years its event streaming platform (also called Mediasite) has taken center stage, streaming 150,000 hours of content annually.
Abdul Rehman, CEO and Co-Founder
It’s the oldest dilemma in video quality assessment: human eye versus algorithm. SSIMWAVE splits the difference with its SSIMPLUS Live Monitor and SSIMPLUS VOD Monitor Inspector, both of which mimic human visual perception (and the latter of which is now available in the cloud).
Yves Padrines, CEO
Last year, Cisco spun out its video division, and Synamedia is the result. The company already powers more than 1 million TV channels and almost a half-million streams for 1,000 customers.
Scott Puopolo, CEO
Already in the upper echelon of streaming media companies, with solutions for almost every step of the video workflow, Telestream went to the next level this year, with its acquisition of Tektronix’s video and audio monitoring and testing division.
George Bokuchava, Co-Founder, CEO, and President
Tulix’s laser-like focus on startup customers—and helping them monetize their content—is what sets it apart.
Amedeo D’Angelo, Chairman and CEO
Verimatrix already had a robust security and analytics portfolio, and earlier this year, it was acquired by Inside Secure—which just changed its name to Verimatrix. The integration strengthens both companies’ offerings.
Ralf Jacob, President
VDMS’s parent company rebranded as Verizon Media Group in late 2018, but that change hasn’t affected VDMS itself, which continues to provide an end-to-end solution from video services to content delivery to QoE.
Anjali Sud, CEO
Vimeo’s vision is “creator first,” according to CEO Sud, and its commitment to helping creators publish and distribute their video at the highest possible quality remains as strong as ever.
Chris Savage, CEO and Co-Founder
Wistia has become the go-to video platform for small businesses and boasts a customer roster featuring more than 500,000 companies.
David Stubenvoll, CEO and Co-Founder
Wowza has been focusing on helping customers attack the latency challenge from every possible angle—with SRT (which it helped develop with Haivision), WebRTC, Common Media Application Format (CMAF), and HLS.
Sean Doherty, CEO and Co-Founder
Wurl found a niche when it launched in 2010, connecting video producers with OTT services and advertisers. Today, the Wurl network delivers more than 5 billion minutes of viewing to 150 million viewers a month.
Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman and CEO
Zixi has faced competition from other low-latency, error-correcting IP contribution and transport technologies, but it’s still relied on by most of the major broadcasters and streaming services.
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