Internap Makes Video Easier With FeedRoom Deal

Written by Ryan Lawler

Tuesday, March 3. 2009 at 12:10 PM EST Post a comment

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Internap Network Services Corp. (Nasdaq: INAP) is trying to boost the appeal of its content delivery network (CDN) to customers pushing video, with a deal to white-label The FeedRoom 's video management platform.

The companies this morning announced the OEM agreement, which will allow Internap to offer The FeedRoom's 4.0 Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) to its customers.  As part of the agreement, Internap will white-label the video platform, rebranding it Internap Studio, and providing all marketing and support for the product.

With the addition of The FeedRoom's software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based video platform, Internap is providing its customers with an easier way to upload and manage video assets.

Internap had offered similar functionality, including transcoding and content management, through a product that it had acquired as part of the VitalStream CDN acquisition.

But according to Dave Frigeri, general manager and vice president of content delivery services at Internap, that product was difficult to provision and took a good deal of time to dial up -- which is why the company wanted to move to a SaaS-based, white-label offering.

"The economics and the business model hadn't kept up with the way things were being offered in the market," Frigeri says. "We wanted to be able to bring some automation to the mix."

With the new platform, Internap can now provision video management services in about five days, as opposed to the six weeks it took with the VitalStream video product, Frigeri says. [Ed. note: Six weeks?!?!?]

For Internap, this deal provides them with another value-added offering that could help the company become more "sticky" with existing customers and to help compete against other CDNs that are "moving up the stack" by providing video management and other services, either through partnership or by rolling out their own offerings.

Mirror Image Internet Inc. , for instance, announced a new media management offering last September that is aimed at extending its reach further into the media and entertainment market. But Internap and The FeedRoom have different plans, as both are primarily focused on the enterprise market.

For The FeedRoom, the deal marks an opportunity to increase sales through channels. But Matt DeLoca, senior vice president of sales at The FeedRoom, says the company is not pushing for white-label deals with other CDNs and service providers.

"This is significant because it's the first one that we've done a deal like this," DeLoca says. "But we're going to be opportunistic about this. I don't have an agenda to go out and start signing OEM deals with everyone. We'd like to see how this plays out."