Over at Streaming Media, Dan Rayburn is excited about Sorenson’s new Sorenson 360 video platform.
After being hands on with the offering for the past three months, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s one of the most well thought out platforms on the market for small and medium sized customers.
While the company markets their new service as a “Video Delivery Network”, the new SaaS based offering is really a video platform that has been built specifically for those who may not need all the bells and whistles of more complex platforms like Brightcove or Ooyala. Sorenson’s new 360 system was designed for the needs of small and medium sized businesses and bundles in transcoding, storage, management, player design, delivery and analytics all in one easy to use system, all hosted by Sorenson.
While I’ve personally used a lot of video platforms myself, many of them are designed for content owners who have a lot of complex needs or are trying to monetize their content. As a result, many platforms have all sorts of functionality for ad insertion and monezitation which makes the platforms quite difficult to learn and use. While there’s nothing wrong with these systems and are valuable for content owners who need that functionality, there’s also another large segment of the market who simply needs to get their content online quickly and easily without all the bells and whistles. That said, I found the Sorenson 360 platform to be not only easy to use, but also rich in functionality.
I just upgraded to Squeeze 5.1 which includes an invitation to try out 360. Going to have to check it out….