Velocix Acquires Live P2P Technology From Rawflow, Announces Deal With Kontiki

This morning, Velocix (formerly known as CacheLogic) made three interesting announcements around their hybrid content delivery network. Velocix announced that it has acquired the exclusive license for RawFlow’s live streaming P2P technology, will provide a hosted version of Kontiki’s P2P delivery solution and announced a new P2P platform offering for developers of commercial P2P media services and applications.

Acquiring the exclusive license to Rawflow’s live P2P streaming technology is a smart move on Velocix’s part and should help to push P2P along with regards to live delivery. I speak to a lot of content owners and some of the major broadcasters who stream live video all day long have tested just about every P2P based solution on the market looking for ones that specifically support live. The feedback I get from customers is that Rawflow is the only P2P technology they have tested that truly works for live and scales to their needs. While I know other P2P providers will say they support live, most don’t, and most are pretty upfront about only supporting on-demand.

For Velocix, they get to add live P2P capabilities to their network and combine it with their carrier based CDN offering. Rawflow will now shift its focus and concentrate 100% on its SelfCast consumer offering. Velocix will also inherit existing RawFlow delivery customers and will assume responsibility for servicing their digital delivery needs moving forwards. While the revenue Velocix gains from the transition of Rawflow’s customers to their network is small, it will grow over time with Velocix now acting as the back-end delivery network for Rawflow moving forward.

Velocix also announced that it is partnering with Kontiki and will now support Kontiki’s Delivery Management System (DMS) across the Velocix network. This is a smart move by both companies as it gives customers who want to use Kontiki an alternative to owning and operating the application and hardware themselves. Over time, this should enable content owners to be able to test and use the Kontiki service without having to spend a lot of money upfront to license and technology and build-out their own hardware. It also give Kontiki an additional revenue stream as they will now be able to offer its customers Velocix http download and video streaming services. It also helps both companies on the development front as Kontiki and Velocix are some of the oldest P2P based companies in the industry and have a wealth of knowledge on P2P that can now be shared amongst the companies.

Finally, Velocix also announced a new offering called P2P+ for developers of commercial P2P media services and applications. Unlike other traditional CDN providers who’s networks are not setup to work with P2P providers, Velocix’s new offering now allows independent P2P application and software providers to run on its hybrid, P2P based network. Existing P2P based delivery services and application providers, including Kontiki, Rawflow, MediaMelon, Babelgum, and Bollywood.tv, are already taking advantage of Velocix’s new P2P+ product and are running today on their open platform.

Velocix is a very interesting company to watch on multiple fronts. To date, they are the only true hybrid CDN in the market that is architected to support both single source (http) and multi-source (P2P) protocols and as a consequence is uniquely positioned in the market for when P2P gains traction. While other CDNs are working to enable a single P2P based company or offering on their network, Velocix has a network that can work with any P2P based technology. And since Velocix offers more than just P2P based delivery and has a suite of traditional CDN based delivery solutions, including being in Adobe’s Certified Flash Video Streaming Service program, content owners can’t use both technologies under one roof. In January of this year Velocix raised $25 million which also gives them an edge on many other P2P companies who have raised less than half that and won’t survive in the market if they don’t show some revenue by the end of next year.

To me, Velocix is going about this the right way. For some time now I have been saying that P2P is not a replacement for CDN, it’s a complement to other kinds of delivery and in order for P2P to be successful, it needs to be combined with a traditional CDN offering. To date, Velocix is the only CDN who is bundling in a P2P based offering with CDN and making it all work on one network. Recently, I have heard from various large customers who have been testing the Velocix network for both kinds of delivery and have been impressed. Expect to see some large customer announcements, names we all know, very shortly.