Kasenna expanding its telco video role

Kasenna is announcing today two new software modules it is hoping will enlarge its place in the video services market to include middleware.

The company, which recently won a significant contract to provide video servers to Iowa Network Services, is launching vFusion, a network management application, and vForge, an application development platform. The former is geared to network operators that might see cost as an impediment to getting into the video market, while the latter gives carriers more control over building unique services.

“The goal is to make it easy to expand what they have,” said Colin Dixon, chief marketing officer of Kasenna.

As networks scale up and begin using decentralized servers closer to the end user, the application will manage content in a way that Kasenna believes is more efficient than current models. Under the vFusion model, the first time a movie (or some other video-on-demand content) is requested, it is streamed to the user from a larger server deep in the network. At the same time, a local server is caching the same content for other users in the same area.

Operating off of the 90/10 rule--in which 10% of VOD content gets 90% of the requests--Kasenna believe this model will lead to more efficient networks.

“It’s kind of hard for anyone to really predict what that 10% is going to be,” Dixon said. “You can probably get 7%, but getting them all right is difficult. We’re bringing that Web service model to the video world.”

It also gives carrier the ability to handle what Dixon called “movie storms.” When a well-known star dies, for example, there’s typically a spike in requests for his or her movies, he said. With vFusion, carriers can actively plan for that.

With vForge, the company is stepping into an area that previously had been dominated by Myrio and Minerva. And while Kasenna has and will continue working with both companies, its middleware is being positioned as more of an open standard play. Based on Java and the J2EE development environment, vForge is designed so that carriers need not have specialized knowledge to develop new applications.

“If you look at somebody like INS, what they want to do is quickly roll out this service on a whole bunch of small networks,” Dixon said. “Those small networks all want their own branding. If you go at that with a traditional middleware approach, it’s going to cost a fortune. This allows INS to build very repeatable sales.”