Wowza Adds Sub-Two Second Latency to Streaming Cloud Service

With gaming and sports streaming on the rise, several companies are trying to tackle the issue of latency in live video streams. Today, streaming specialist Wowza Media Systems announced it's adding Ultra Low Latency Service to its Wowza Streaming Cloud Platform. How low is ultra-low? Wowza says it can stream video around the world in two seconds or less.

Not only is Wowza promising speed, but quality, as well: These ultra-low latency streams start instantly and don't buffer, promises company CEO and co-founder Dave Stubenvoll.

Wowza is able to do this since its platform is built on Microsoft Azure data centers, with POPs and nodes around the globe. The low-latency service finds the closest ingest point and streams over a single unified network, a system that reduces last-mile problems.

To monitor the quality of those streams, Wowza relies on real-time monitoring and self-healing technologies so it can promise customers enterprise-quality redundancy and uptime. The system was built to identity and fix issues before they become problems.

Wowza's ultra-low service isn't just for video delivery, but for systems that need two-way real-time video and data. Customers include European gaming companies that allow betting while a match or race is in progress. In those circumstances, seeing the live video immediately has a significant impact on the results.

Wowza will demonstrate its Ultra Low Latency Service at IBC in Amsterdam later this month.