A new software solution that enables service providers to stream content from cloud hosted video libraries has been announced by Concurrent. The company’s unified origin server is meant to simplify content distribution as well as reduce the costs associated with content preparation.

Comprised of the eFactor dynamic content workflow solution, the unified origin server lets multi-channel video service providers access premium content hosted on cloud storage services like Amazon S3. They may then pull content into their own delivery networks to deliver it to their customers on demand.

Content is dynamically adjusted as it is accessed from cloud storage, ensuring format, video quality, business requirements and digital rights protection standards are all met. The solution can support live as well as on-demand video delivery to PCs, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, game consoles and even classic set-top boxes. The eFactor component ensures content is converted on-the-fly to satisfy the format, protection and quality requirements of the customer application or target screen.

The Concurrent offering is also virtualized and cloud enabled, meaning it may be run in a variety of hardware architectures as well as in public and private video delivery networks.

"Video content is increasingly being hosted outside of the service provider's own operations center using cloud-based storage services," said Bob Chism, CTO at Concurrent. "By enabling service providers to pull content on-demand over the Internet from third-party sources, Concurrent makes it easier and more cost effective to expand their multi-screen video offering to consumers, while providing content owners a way to maintain better control over their content library."

The shift to on-demand video content delivered to a variety of devices is causing massive disruption in the marketplace. ABI Research (News - Alert) finds that cloud oriented content management system (CMS) vendors are expected to capture the market and experience nearly 100 percent growth, seizing nearly half of the total video on demand management market by 2018. Cloud storage is already playing a major role in that market shift, with a report from Deloitte (News - Alert) Consulting finding that Amazon EC2 was used to host and stream live motor sport races to more than 3.1 million visitors.

Concurrent’s support of cloud storage benefits both service providers and content suppliers in a number of ways. The solution streamlines the on-boarding process for new, multi-screen video content and enables content suppliers to upload a single video format and store it centrally in a secure system that is Internet accessible. This ultimately enables cost savings on both content preparation and storage.