Amazon Web Services Buying Elemental for a Reported $500M
News broke this afternoon that one of the online video industry's biggest players—Amazon Web Services—will acquire another of the industry's biggest players—Elemental Technologies. While no amount was given by the two companies, The Information cited an anonymous source that Amazon is paying $500 million in cash.
In its announcement, Amazon says the acquisition combines the AWS Cloud platform with Elemental's software-defined video solutions, offering media and entertainment companies a range of possibilities for economically scaling their video infrastructures. It notes that Elemental has over 700 media customers and powers the BBC iPlayer, HBO Go, CNNGo, ESPN Score Center, and others.
“Together, we’ll collaborate on deeper technology integrations and new infrastructure offerings so that media and entertainment companies can evolve their hybrid and cloud models as they continue to innovate their services for viewers,” says Andy Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services.
Portland, Oregon-based Elemental will continue to run under its own brand. It will create deeper integrations with AWS as part of the acquisition.
"The combined entity will afford customers more choice and infrastructure scalability than ever," wrote Elemental's CEO and co-founder Sam Blackman in a letter to industry colleagues. "Make no mistake: The key focus for the combined AWS and Elemental entity will be delighting customers with best-in-class video quality, technology innovation, and service reliability regardless of where they choose to host their video infrastructure."
The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2015.
If you see friends from Elemental at IBC, tell them they're buying the drinks.
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