Wowza CEO Krish Kumar Talks Product Strategy, Enhanced Analytics, and AI for Encoding and Metadata
In November 2024, Wowza appointed Krish Kumar CEO. Wowza provides foundational technologies to many name-brand products and services, as well as streaming functionality to tens of thousands of developers integrating video into their operations. Understanding where Kumar plans to take Wowza is critical to all those whose businesses touch streaming video.
To learn more about Krish and Wowza’s future direction, contributing editor Jan Ozer interviewed him about ten days before NAB 2025. Here’s a summary of the conversation which you can read in lightly edited format below.
Kumar's background includes electrical engineering, an executive MBA, and leadership roles at Google and BrightEdge. He joined Wowza due to its core position in the streaming industry and his belief in aligning technology with business needs. The interview detailed his strategies for Wowza, emphasizing a balance between short-term customer success and long-term innovation.
Kumar discussed Wowza's product strategy, focusing on the continued development of both Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Video. He highlighted the Engine's flexibility and power, while acknowledging the need for accessible solutions like Wowza Video. The conversation covered Wowza's expansion beyond traditional media and entertainment, targeting sectors like security, healthcare, and IoT.
The interview also addressed the integration of FlowPlayer for enhanced analytics and the role of AI in Wowza's future, including applications in encoding and metadata generation. Kumar provided an overview of Wowza's platform, emphasizing its support for various protocols and deployment models. The discussion provides clarity on Wowza's direction and what Kumar sees as its impact on the streaming ecosystem.
Kumar's Background
Kumar was trained as an electrical engineer complemented by an executive MBA. Before Wowza, Kumar was CEO of BrightEdge, an SEO and marketing automation platform, and spent about eight years in various roles at Google.
Kumar attributed his decision to join Wowza to the company’s central role in the streaming industry and believes that his ability to bridge technology with business needs is key to driving Wowza forward. "I've always been an engineer at heart, Kumar explained. “What really gets me going is taking proven technology and applying it to mission-critical environments. It's not just about streaming; we address many critical aspects of our customers' businesses. When you can scale it in a very reliable manner and take it to a customer with great value, that's really exciting for me.”
Kumar elaborated, “in our streaming and video world, Wowza has immense value that we can bring to customers… I'm very customer centric. I believe that you can't actually make customers successful without a strong grasp of go to market. And that's also been a big part of how I operate. It's aligning the technology to the market, to the customers.”
Short and Long-Term Strategies at Wowza
Ozer then asked about Kumar’s short- and long-term strategy. Kumar responded, that “Most CEOs must balance the short-term performance with the long-term vision. Our short-term focus is centered on making our customers wildly successful. We know that when our customers grow, we grow. On average, 34% of customers on Wowza have been incredibly successful and have grown. We're incredibly proud of that and continue to win the hearts and minds of successful and innovative brands.”
“We've been very profitable and a very reliable and dependable partner with strong global roots. When you take that in with the technical excellence, dependability, and financial durability, it makes Wowza a really good choice for streaming for mission-critical applications, larger enterprises, governments, or live streaming environments."
"In the short term, I want to bring that customer centricity. If I were to summarize it into three things, the first would be customer success. Secondly, it's about true innovation. In our industry, there's real innovation that makes a difference to customers, and we're really focused on that. There are a lot of things which I call 'shiny objects' that may not actually have a lot of impact on customers. We're not focused on those. Thirdly, we are also about reinvesting. We have a strong legacy of contributing to the industry and making a lot of streaming successful. We've been investing in our core competency of being the technology behind any reliable stream. That's the top three areas of focus for me in the short term."
"Regarding driving sales over the next 3 to 6 months, our customer retention rates have been really good. As we add value-added services on top of that, our retention rates go up. Obviously, that contributes to revenue. New customer acquisition has been particularly strong and is accelerating now, especially as we've streamlined our Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Video offerings. “
“We have very clear messaging to market, so we're seeing a lot of momentum with new customers. That also obviously translates to revenue, And I think when you look at our engineering team, you'll see they've built our products on a very scalable and modular architecture. That really drives a lot of speed and efficiency in our engineering organization. Because of that, we're able to get a lot of innovation and launch velocity that drives a lot of revenue and also profitability."
Wowza's Dual Product Strategy
Regarding Wowza’s products, Ozer asked, “Wowza has two products, Wowza Video, which is a newer product targeted towards less technical users, and Wowza Streaming Engine, which provides most of the functionality for Wowza Video, and is the more developer-centric product. Do you see that dual focus going forward, and which do you see as more important?"
“When you look at our overall product strategy, we're really doubling down on our core strength. When you look at Wowza Streaming Engine, it's the most flexible, it's the most powerful server out there, and it's able to run on-prem, on the cloud and in hybrid environments."
“So, we really give our customers a lot of flexibility in deploying Engine anywhere, cloud, on-prem, in devices, etc. That kind of deployment flexibility is rare, and it's critical now as organizations need full control and as they're operating in highly secure and compliant environments. That's something that they actually need and depend on.
"Wowza Streaming Engine is also one of the most used API or trusted APIs in the streaming world. It's used largely by enterprises, governments, and platforms globally. You've probably seen or worked on Wowza without realizing that Wowza was under the hood.
"So, we power everything, from major enterprise webinars to videos from the International Space Station. When you have customers like NASA and law enforcement agencies using Wowza because it works every time and it can be deployed in any environment, that's important. They're vastly different environments and use cases.
"But as video is becoming more mission critical, we're also seeing platforms running into challenges using first-generation tools or smaller point products or offshore development. That's where I think Wowza really stands apart. We're very compliant. We have a SOC2 certification. And we've been the bar for compliance and secure streaming.
"That's becoming more important as customers are putting video as a core part of their offering or their workflows. But doubling down there doesn't mean standing still.
"Beyond Engine, we have Wowza Video, our full-service cloud offering. It's for customers who want to move fast without managing or deploying their own infrastructure. We complement that with FlowPlayer, a lightweight player with built-in analytics. We're talking billions of hours of streams going to FlowPlayer today. So now when you look at Wowza, we have everything from ingestion to processing to delivery to playback and insights."
"So, we really have an end-to-end offering targeted at all areas of the market. And we give users and developers a lot of flexibility in terms of how they want to run with it. At the end of the day, it's not just about transcoding. It's about making sure that the video works every single time, at every single start. And we're really focused on delivering that level of reliability that our customers expect. And that's really where Wowza delivers. We're staying true to that, and we are doubling down on that as part of our product strategy."
Wowza's Target Markets
Regarding Wowza’s target markets, Ozer asked, “The crown jewel of the streaming market, in a lot of people's minds, is media and entertainment, but it's really quite a small market. What are the markets that you see as strategic to your growth going forward?"
"Media and entertainment is a strong and growing market, especially when you look at areas like live sports, social and even faith-based streaming. But we see some of the largest growth and opportunities in other areas, too, as video is becoming mainstream into enterprises. Industries like security and surveillance, smart cities, public safety, military are already early adopters of Wowza, but we're actually seeing a lot more demand and adoption from these industries.
"We've been really successful in those spaces. Getting into those spaces is not particularly easy. You must build a compliant piece of software. You have to be reliable, and you have to be tested and proven for many years before you're given a chance to do that.
"So, we are seeing more adoption, more use of video in those industries. And video is becoming more mission critical. Like you look at health care, for example. Telemedicine was a big thing during the pandemic. But now hospitals are using it for ICU telemetry for vital signs. They're using video for that. They're using it for patient diagnostics with ultra-low latency. That's mission critical."
"And then IoT. IoT was a buzzword probably a decade ago, but manufacturing, energy and utilities are now using it for quality control, safety inspections. Video brings IoT to life. Think about it. A technician using smart glasses and projecting that over video. That's something we saw as a concept maybe 6 or 7 years ago. That's becoming a reality now. We're doing that with low-latency streaming.
"We embed into all sorts of use cases and that portability with browser actually makes it very attractive for some of these segments. We're embedded in drone-based surveillance systems, connected to health care devices, and even tele-operated robotics. It was a use case that I saw two weeks ago, which was pretty exciting.
"Once again, part of the reason Wowza fits in so well with this industry is because we have that flexibility of embedding running in the cloud or running on-prem connected or disconnected and our APIs are deeply extensible. That actually really opens that opportunity up to a lot of other industries in addition to media and entertainment."
Wowza's Market Positioning and Definition
Ozer then asked about how Kumar defined the streaming market and where Wowza fit into it. "Streaming is a crowded and often confusing market. How would you draft the landscape of this market and where do you put Wowza in that landscape?"
"When you think about this, and building on your last question, I think the future of video is really wide open. It's not just about media and entertainment and streaming. It's about video as real-time visibility, decision making and trust. As the industry evolves, video is not a nice-to-have. It's foundational. I think Wowza has always been strong there. And that's where you see a lot of entrants that are approaching the market with a very different perspective."
"So, when you start looking at that landscape, it's really interesting. The streaming space is particularly broad. And when I look at competition, it's very important to break it down into the product category and the deployment model. Wowza operates across several layers of the video stack. So, the landscape does shift depending on which space that you're looking at. "
“I'll give you an example. In the OVP and the cloud platform space, you're right. You'll see well-known brands like Brightcove, Vimeo, Kaltura, FlowPlayer. When you look at these companies, while they may seem like competitors, they're not. They have their own branded video services that leverage Wowza to handle the most demanding parts of streaming. So, while we may look like competitors, we actually work as partners. "
“For Wowza, that speaks volumes because people trust the technology. And we are powering a lot of those critical workflows. Each one of these companies serve different segments, some focusing on education and others on marketing and so forth. They have different architectures for the clouds or the CDNs. But they're able to fit Wowza into that equation because of that flexible deployment model.”
“On the infrastructure side, we see competitors like Amazon Media Services, which provide managed streaming capability, and which is integrated into their cloud ecosystem. That's good for specific workloads. But often that comes with a lot of rigidity, obviously tied to one cloud. Not being able to move containers across different offerings and tailor it. That's where if you want to highly customize it, even embedded, it's something that you can’t do with providers such as Amazon. So that's where we're able to differentiate ourselves and carve ourselves out of that segment.”
"Finally, we have a lot of customers that want complete control over the infrastructure. And that's where Wowza is well set up to succeed.”
The Value FlowPlayer Brings to the Table
Wowza acquired FlowPlayer in 2022. Regarding the functionality FlowPlayer brings to Wowza, Jan asked, “you've mentioned a couple of times about the insights available from FlowPlayer. Could you be more specific? How are your customers benefiting from that information?"
Kumar responded, "When you start looking at FlowPlayer, it's not just about the player. It's about the analytics that customers are drawing from that player information, which presents a huge opportunity. Companies like Amazon, YouTube and Netflix are using deep analytics to optimize every frame or every delivery. For them, it's not just about performance or viewer engagement or content investment decisions. We're down that path. With FlowPlayer, we've built in query metrics like buffering, counter video stop time, and our customers are using it to proactively manage that view experience.
"One example is a telehealth platform built on Wowza, which captures live medical consults and uses the analytics of that. For them, a slight delay, like sub-one-second delay in start time, can impact care delivery. So, they're continually looking at their player analytics and optimizing the network performance on that. That's a hard use case, but that shows what's possible when you are using a player that's highly integrated with the video offering.
“The other area that we see a lot of opportunity is automating. We're working with remote partners that are using forensic interviews or proctoring tests. For them, the compliance aspect of that is very important frame by frame compliance and audibility. So, in those scenarios, it's not just about the smooth delivery. But it's more about understanding the usage, the tracking of that event integrity. Like, are you taking the test properly? Are you interviewing under stress?
“And having player analytics flagging the anomalies and all those anomalies before entering the workflow is very important. That's where I think the player analytics provides a lot of confidence and accountability in sensitive and regulated environments. Looking ahead, I see a huge potential in automating this.
"For example, we know we're going to start applying that into network scenarios. How can we dynamically reroute the traffic based on QoE trends or detect viewer drop offs and recommend content adjustments, whether it's ads or otherwise? Today we have the technology to do that right with FlowPlayer and Engine integrated. These are some examples where I think FlowPlayer is very useful and very strategic when actually used as a part of our video and engine offerings."
AI's Present and Future Role in Wowza's Streaming Technology
Ozer next asked about how Wowza is currently using AI in its products and what’s planned.
Kumar responded, “We're already seeing AI in action. When you look at our development and what we've been doing, most of our modules sit on a lot of the core AI processing, whether it's using cloud-based AI models or whether it's using our own TensorFlow based models, etc. So, we're already seeing AI in action.”
“I'll give you some concrete examples, including captions, translations, alternate audio, or even things like smart AI encoding using scene-based optimization, those are things that we are today using AI. Does the customer naturally need to know that it's getting an AI? Maybe, but ultimately, what they care about is that they're getting a lot more throughput. They're actually getting better performance and actually getting better cost reduction by that."
"When you look at the future roadmap, AI is also about giving better discoverability, auto generating metadata. I think we're doing that now as a part of limited release; understanding moods and even helping places feel natural. Those are things like vision enhancements, as I call it, which are going to be a big part in our industry. Customers are going to look at different ways of monetizing it and taking that out.”
"And then in the future we'll see, and we are actually seeing that with some of our partners, fully personalized ads that are generated in real time. YouTube, for example, has done a very good job at it. And I think the industry will follow there with hyper-targeted personalized ads in real time as audience demands changes. So those are some of the things that even the monetization side, I think AI can really help."
Kumar's Elevator Pitch for Wowza
The conversation concluded with Ozer asking Kumar for an “elevator pitch” for Wowza. Here’s his response.
“The way I think about it is, Wowza powers mission-critical streaming infrastructure behind some of the most demanding video applications in the world. Some of the things that we spoke about, whether you're building a global video platform or deploying a low latency stream for a health care security or embedding that video into a custom workflow, Wowza is super flexible. It's a developer first building block that gives full control over how video is ingested, processed, and ultimately delivered."
"So, the way I think about it, and you'll probably see some of this at NAB, is that we support every protocol, we run anywhere, whether it's cloud, on-prem or hybrid. And we can scale it from a single stream to millions of viewers. The way I think about Wowza is if video is critical to your business, then Wowza is the engine that's proven and makes it work."
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