It’s been eight years since Origin Digital built its own private cloud, and we got a chance to sit down with Darcy Lorincz, CEO of the company at Streaming Media East last week to find out what Origin Digital has been doing since then.
Lorincz shed some light on the latest developments from Origin Digital, and discussed where the video market has been the last couple of years, and where it will be going. Origin Digital was discussing its cloud encoding and transcoding solutions at Streaming Media East, but it’s also a provider of video presentation technology, live event solutions, and online video platforms.
One significant driver of Origin Digital’s business is the growing market for live events. Lorincz noted that the “events business continues to grow globally. This year we will do 14,000 live events. Many of them will be corporate video events. Origin is one of the larger players in the live event space.”
With the capability to produce thousands of live events, Origin Digital is now able to be its own boss, in a sense. Enterprises have a carnivorous need to produce, host, record, and distribute their live events for the purposes of issuing to investors or educating staff. Origin Digital uses its internally-built technology to reach companies with these needs in 46 countries.
“On the live events side, it’s our reach that’s important. We have teleports. We have our own fiber network. We are globally connected. We aren’t relying on the Internet,” said Lorincz. “We encode large files for customers directly, and don’t have to rely on the Internet to get the files to the clients. Doing that many events with companies that have fewer than 100 people is a testament to our automation systems. Cloud has saved us a lot in terms of time. Offering BYOD elements brings us totally into the cloud as well.”
Scalability is key for providers of video platforms, as Origin Digital learned, so the company built its own encoder. By hosting its own secret sauce, Origin has been able to target companies that require the heavy lifting of cloud-based video work done. Lorincz mentioned that Origin has seen the market reemerge with everyone looking at cloud services. But, importantly, the market is looking at renting capacity, eliminating the need for boxes.
“We have a hosted CMS so that enables us to be even more flexible. It sits in the cloud. It does ad insertion. It does many things that typical encoders don’t have. We’re not just software and cloud, we have media operations, we have engineers on staff in all those countries. We have a lot media and a huge capacity,” said Lorincz.
Ultimately, the evolution of video encoding and live event recording is on the move. And Origin Digital plans on leading the pack.