View From the Top: Wowza: The Power Behind Video
When Charlie Good, co-founder of Wowza, and I started this company back in 2007, we did it with one guiding principle. We believed that successful companies didn’t appear out of thin air, born from an idea and a wish. More often, healthy companies grew as offshoots from others. So, we didn’t wait for the perfect idea—we chose to get our hands dirty, figured out what customers were responding to, and pivoted our company as needed. We decided right out of the gate that if we couldn’t support a daily Starbucks habit within 90 days of launching an idea, we’d move along to the next one. This commitment to building something both sustainable and demanded by customers is why Wowza is in a strong position today, as a healthy and profitable company that still leads the streaming industry.
Wowza team travels to IBC 2024 to promote tech and channel partnership programs.
Granted there is more to being a leader than having the right attitude. If I were to break down all the pieces that contributed to Wowza’s success over the years, I’d say it’s not only our willingness to pivot, but also our ability to identify and play to our strengths. In addition to these two things, I credit our pinpoint focus on customer needs, and our ability to develop strong, long-term technical partnerships. Let’s break those down, starting with the first iteration of Wowza that earned us our daily espressos.
Wowza started as a video blogging (vlogging) platform. In developing it, we realized the industry standard at the time (Adobe Flash Media Server) would not be adaptable to our needs—so Charlie coded something new. As it turned out, that proprietary solution got more attention than the vlogging platform itself. Even as we explored other use cases like social media and video messaging, our little Java servlet was getting attention. Given our commitment to profitability and sustainability, we pivoted, and Wowza Media Systems was born.
We exercise that spirit of adaptability to this day, expanding our solutions to meet evolving customer needs and challenges, as evidenced by our recent expansion of VOD capabilities, new monetization tools, and expanded video player features.
By recognizing and building on our greatest strengths, we were able to offer customers the ability to build something on top of our platform as well. We didn’t get distracted by vanity features but instead invested heavily in a reliable foundation. Our media server software has been a mainstay in the streaming industry for nearly two decades and serves as the foundation for over 38,000 implementations in over 140 countries, including our own cloud-based Wowza Video. Today we transcode over 30 million hours of live video each month.
What Wowza does best: from transcoding through analytics.
It’s worth noting that we recognized this strength because our customer base did. It was their enthusiasm for our technology that inspired us to further develop it. We’ve proudly continued this habit of paying close attention to the needs of not only our customers but also the market. A big part of that is recognizing that no two customers are the same and their biggest common need is an adaptable solution. We offer flexible deployment options, including self-hosted, Wowza-hosted, and hybrid. Our Wowza Streaming Engine software is both builder-friendly and highly customizable, while our SaaS counterpart is easy to start and easy to scale. The hybrid combination of these solutions allows people to explore the best of both worlds.
We are also very aware that cost of ownership, complexity, and rigid infrastructures are creating serious hurdles for companies today. With this in mind, Wowza offers a platform that is not only a future-proof streaming investment, but also a simpler platform overall that allows consolidation to a single, streaming solution. These two things, along with a simple and transparent pricing model, make it easier for clients to both justify and predict a healthy return on investment.
Finally, we come to our strong tech partnerships. If history tells us anything, it’s that Wowza shines brightest when part of a team. And this is true not only when our customers build their own products, but also within our tech partner network. We’ve maintained long-lasting relationships with companies like MainConcept, who supplies our streaming engine software’s codecs, but we also continue to grow our roster of tech partners. Last year we announced high-density transcoding with AMD, and this year, we’ve worked even harder to strengthen and expand these relationships—welcoming companies like AWS, Zixi, Spyrosoft, Axinom, and Applicaster into the Wowza fold.
If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that the more things change the more they stay the same. Wowza undeniably innovates. Just ask Frost & Sullivan, who named us an innovation leader in the Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) space AND an innovation leader in the Online Video Platform (OVP) for Media and Entertainment space. Or look at how Wowza is expanding what we offer for customers, through our new VOD capabilities, integrated partner network, and constant upgrades in our transcoding technology. But at the heart of that innovative spirit is long-standing, reliable streaming infrastructure that you’ve probably already experienced without even knowing it. Now we sustain our own coffee budgets alongside many of our customers who have grown and scaled with Wowza.
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Pictured left to right: Dave Stubenvoll, Elliot Miller, Brian Ellis, and James Seward.
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