thePlatform Now Offering Cheap CDN, Storage Services

Written by Ryan Lawler

Monday, February 9. 2009 at 07:30 AM EST 5 comments

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In an effort to lower the overall cost of operating a broadband video business, thePlatform Inc. today announced that it has begun reselling CDN and cloud storage services.

thePlatform, which offers a white-label platform for managing the distribution of rich media and video assets, sees the new initiative as a way to lower costs, especially for small content owners. The company estimates that content delivery makes up about 78 percent of the total cost of running a small video site, with storage making up another 5 percent.   

As a result, the company has launched two new services: mpsManage Storage and mpsManage CDN. mpsManage Storage provides low-priced cloud-based storage from a mix of different providers, including Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Nirvanix Inc. , and Rackspace Managed Hosting . With mpsManage CDN, thePlatform is reselling CDN services from EdgeCast Networks Inc. , providing utility-based pricing for streaming and download services with no commitments to its customers.

Marty Roberts, thePlatform vice president of marketing, says the company will use volume deals to attain better CDN and storage pricing than its customers could get on their own. thePlatform says the average price for delivery of about 250,000 videos is about $0.55 per gigabyte. As part of its deal with EdgeCast, thePlatform's CDN pricing will start at $0.35 cents per gigabyte, and will go down with volume.

With the new storage and CDN services, thePlatform claims that it can lower the overall cost of running a small video by up to 32 percent. That includes a 36 percent reduction in the costs of content delivery and a 75 percent reduction in the cost of storage.

In addition to the new services, thePlatform is enabling its customers to save 10 percent off products and services from select partners, including Black Arrow, Panache , LiveRail Inc. , TubeMogul, Visible Measures Corp. , ScanScout Inc. , and Gloto.

The overall initiative is aimed at capturing a segment of the video management market that thePlatform hadn't focused much on previously. 

thePlatform has had a good deal of success managing online video syndication for a number of large cable operators, including parent company Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), as well as Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC), Cox Communications Inc. , and Charter Communications Inc. . The company has also won a number of deals with news organizations, including the Associated Press, Gannett, News Corp.'s Australian papers, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Roberts says that top-tier customers -- those serving 10 million videos a month or more -- make up about 15 to 20 percent of thePlatform's customer base. But, he says, "we don't have a lot of low-end customers."

By giving content owners cheaper options for video storage and delivery, thePlatform hopes to move down market to grab some business from the lower end of the video market -- i.e., companies that serve 500,000 videos or fewer a month.