Haivision Launches the Calypso Enterprise Video Platform
Moving beyond end-point encoders and further into the media asset space, Haivision is launching a centralized media hub for enterprise which it's calling the Calypso Enterprise Video Platform, an extension of the existing Calypso product line.
Haivision sees the Calypso EVP as a centralized hub where companies can manage, store, and share live and on-demand video. The company is targeting any enterprise that needs to delivery video assets to employees throughout the organization.
As the company moves to this second version of the Calypso software, it is positioning it as more than just a mass-recording product. The initial version of Calypso was billed as a way to enable high performance enterprise record and review in environments like usability labs, focus groups, and training facilities. The new EVP product, an extension of Calypso, allows employees to access both live and on-demand content.
“Calypso for us is the go-forward platform,” says Peter Maag, chief marketing officer at Haivision, referring to the company's purchase of Video Furnace a number of years ago. “We originally positioned Calypso as a mass-recording product, but we’re excited that Calypso is emerging as a way to deliver live and on-demand assets within the organization.”
In a news release, Haivision says the new Calypso EVP will focus on four areas critical to business continuity: authentication, compliance features, content curation, and search. In addition, the company says Calypso will offer multi-location support and what it calls "simulated multicast."
According to Maag, companies want a controlled environment where they can distribute videos, guarantee they’ve been watched, and use that to gain or maintain ISO or similar compliance certifications.
“You hear slogans about video being the new document, but that’s not true,” Maag says. “The difference between video and a document: You can be assured that the video has at least played continuously on the employee’s screen.”
Haivision designed the platform to solve the delivery challenge most companies face with internal video, so it comes with strong multi-location support.
“Companies can easily distribute video to multiple locations,” Maag says. “To extend the video viewing experience to any office without significant network loading, the Calypso solution allows companies to create their own delivery network so every employee can watch video directly from their desktops and mobile devices.”
Enterprise customers control network video delivery through their choice of streaming modality, such as unicast, multicast, or simulated multicast.
“We’re playing in our customers’ sandbox, so they can choose to do their own multicast, simulated multicast, or even unicast,” Maag notes. “Unicast and simulated multicast are natively supported. In the future, we plan to support multicast natively within Calypso.”
Haivision uses RTMFP with internal support for simulated multicast. But the goal, according to Maag, is to provide as many options as possible.
“We’ve had a strong history with secure multicast, and Calypso had direct unicast,” Maag says. “With the Calypso EVP, we’re supporting player-based stream replication based on inherent Flash Player technologies that work within browsers. Clients do not need to buy any particular third-party infrastructure, since it is a complete Haivision solution.”
Calypso’s authentication lets companies share video with only the right viewers.
“The Calypso EVP has current mobile authentication for browser-based mobile delivery, but we plan to have a native Calypso app available within about six weeks, for both Android and iOS devices," Maag says.
Administrators can share content with individuals or groups. “Based on their roles and responsibilities, they can even establish different privileges, such as viewing, downloading, sharing, or even editing," Maag adds.
Using both curation and search, Calypso can place key videos directly in front of the target viewer.
“Content administrators can easily organize videos for effective employee browsing,” Maag says. This includes topical channels and “not to be missed” videos.
Calypso supports extensive metadata, search, and filtering, helping users find videos and even specific moments within videos.
“In the last few years, we’ve seen Calypso used in micro applications,” Maag says. “File-based, hot marks, and live content metadata can all be useful in on-demand viewing of content. But our background in live encoding means that, from a metadata and search standpoint, we treat on-demand and live content as equal citizens within the ecosystem.”
By hot marks, Maag refers to bookmarks, in-video tags, or comments. Real-time metadata is accessible within live streams.
“'YouTube for the Enterprise' sort of scares people,” Maag adds. “It brings to mind the idea of many, many videos being recorded and uploaded, which means the important videos may be lost or buried. Proper search and curation help solve that issue.”
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