MediaPlatform Smartpath Critical for Managing Complexity of Delivering Video to Hybrid Workforces

MediaPlatform’s Smartpath intelligent video distribution and failover solution is yielding new benefits to customers as their employees have transitioned to hybrid in-office and remote work arrangements that have increased network traffic and the number of employees accessing corporate resources from mobile devices and home networks,

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MediaPlatform’s network-agnostic approach centers on MediaPlatform Smartpath, which provides a framework for format and adaptive bitrate streaming delivery and failover distribution rules optimized for the enterprise’s specific network conditions. Smartpath acts as an overlay network that uses a rule-based IP address analysis to assign a compatible stream across a variety of end point distribution technologies – from VPNs, LANs Wi-Fi and eCDNs behind-the-firewall, to external peering providers and CDNs – and across desktop, tablet, or mobile devices.

Customers further optimize their delivery capabilities using MediaPlatform Edge® eCDN software. MediaPlatform Edge is a secure stream splitting/caching video engine that not only stream splits live video content but also allows for pre-positioning and caching of on-demand video content. The software can be deployed as a company-wide eCDN, intelligently peering to comprise an organization-wide eCDN for all video streaming.

MediaPlatform customers are leveraging Smartpath to alleviate VPN bottlenecks and optimize efficiency across multiple delivery technologies in the following ways:

• Using Smartpath to detect viewers’ location and target different bitrate streams so they are optimized for the viewer’s location, whether the user is on the LAN, WAN or is a VPN user that has been split tunneled.
• Using Smartpath to define the role of MediaPlatform Edge servers, which can be used as origin servers to send a single, high-quality stream across the network or as caching devices in remote locations.
• Using Smartpath and MediaPlatform Edge – along with peering and other distribution technologies – to map out extremely granular bandwidth optimization strategies with multiple failover options for every viewer.
• Using Smartpath to white- and black-list IP ranges for bandwidth and security purposes. Customers have excluded VPN ranges from receiving video streams to prevent VPN overload, while others have blocked every IP address except specific VPN IP ranges to ensure that only internal users can view the live stream.
• Using Smartpath to control video quality by IP ranges. MediaPlatform customers will send very high-quality streams to the IP addresses of company auditoriums and viewing rooms, for example, while others will send very low-bitrate streams to bandwidth-challenged locations to ensure that employees there can participate at least via audio stream.

“We saw a four-fold increase in the number of connections to our customer webcasts after the pandemic drove employees to work from home,” said Mike Newman, CEO of MediaPlatform. “Smartpath has been exceptionally valuable in helping these customers manage – from both a cost and quality perspective – the massive increase in viewer connections that will likely grow as companies commit to hybrid workforce plans,” Newman said.

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MediaPlatform’s enterprise video platform includes the MediaPlatform® Broadcaster live webcasting platform, MediaPlatform® On Demand video content management portal, MediaPlatform’s video delivery capabilities – including its Smartpath network overlay rules engine for management of failover and redundancy across multiple vendor technologies and Edge eCDN, and MediaPlatform’s real-time analytics suite including the Event Success Dashboard quality of experience and Video Business Intelligence quality of service offerings.

MediaPlatform’s innovation has been recognized by top industry analysts. MediaPlatform was named a Leader in the 2021 Aragon Research Globe and a Leader by Gartner Research in its Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management (EVCM). The company also has been named a key provider in several recent reports including the Forrester Tech Tide, the Gartner EVCM Market Guide and Wainhouse Research’s Enterprise Streaming Solutions and Services report. The company is frequently named one of the top video players alongside Zoom, Microsoft and IBM and Cisco in global enterprise video industry research reports including those by Global Market Insights, Market Study Report LLC and DATAINTELO.