Next-Generation Blackwave Video Delivery System

Blackwave, in Internet video storage and delivery infrastructure, announced its next-generation Blackwave video delivery system. The new Blackwave System integrates Blackwave’s enterprise-class Chorus software to address the massive delivery requirements of very large Internet content providers, including content publishers, video aggregators, telcos, wireless network operators, Cable/IPTV providers and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

"The Blackwave System and its Blackwave Chorus software sets a new standard that provides the high performance and resiliency that major customers demand while also dramatically reducing their capital and operational expenditures," said Blackwave Chief Executive Officer Bob Rizika. "We are having enormous success with our Blackwave Chorus software at large-scale customer implementations in Japan and South Korea with blue-ribbon customers like SkillUpJapan and Shinsegae. The system puts us at the forefront of the global market for ultra-fast distribution of high-quality video content over the Internet."

At the heart of the Blackwave System is Blackwave Chorus, tightly-woven software that optimizes commodity hardware to provide reliable video delivery to thousands of simultaneous viewers across computers, televisions, and mobile devices. "Blackwave Chorus eliminates all single-points-of-failure associated with video delivery, while delivering unlimited amounts of content," Rizika said. "The result: the end-use is guaranteed a high-quality viewing experience, and the content provider maintains an excellent reputation."

"The Blackwave Chorus software enables the level of full-system performance that large-scale users need to provide tens of thousands of simultaneous video streams from a single rack," said Terri McClure, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Its advantage is in its orchestration of system resources to optimize performance and at the same time increase overall system reliability and resiliency."

Other powerful new capabilities of the Blackwave System include: a wide range of popular video delivery protocols in a single box, and complete support for Adobe Flash delivery. Said Rizika, "These features make the Blackwave System the most complete, highly-integrated solution available for the delivery of large libraries of video content via IP. Blackwave is the platform of choice for a traditional over-the-top offering or as part of a ‘TV-Everywhere’-style managed service."

"The Blackwave System allows us to deliver multiple protocols (WMS, FMS and HTTP) within a single system," said Hiroaki Sugawara, Director of System Development for SkillupJapan. "Our customers stream content to multiple devices, and Blackwave will fit well in our business when it becomes a single infrastructure for all the protocols we need to deliver."

Blackwave Chorus harmonizes
to provide enterprise-class resiliency
The Blackwave Chorus software comprises a set of features and services that work automatically to provide the extremely high levels of reliability and availability required by large customers.

These include:

• Dual physical paths to every title, on dual servers. Content providers that do mirroring actually have eight paths to a piece of content, each independent. The result: virtually failure-proof enterprise video delivery.
• Disk self-healing. The Blackwave System employs content-based self- healing to repair individual titles when bad blocks are detected. Should an entire disk fail, repair is done around it using slack capacity on other drives.
• Varied Ingest Protocols. With the release of Chorus, Blackwave extends its support of upload protocols from the standard HTTP and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to include Network File System (NFS) and Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols for uploading, or ‘ingesting,’ of data. These protocols enable the System to integrate smoothly with content management systems and other applications uploading to the Blackwave system for distribution.

Blackwave’s Adobe Flash implementation
drives down customers’ costs
The Blackwave system now embeds Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server, adding Adobe Flash to Blackwave’s other supported streaming services – HTTP progressive downloads and Windows Media Server. Content providers can get any of these services in any combination on a single infrastructure, a single set of disks – thereby significantly reducing their cost of ownership.

Blackwave CTO Kilian noted that Blackwave’s integration of Adobe Flash is ‘full strength.’ All Adobe plug-ins are supported (except the File plug-in, which is used to talk to the Blackwave system), as well as Action Scripts and server-side playlists.

"The performance of Blackwave’s Adobe Flash implementation is outstanding," Kilian said. "We are providing the highest bandwidth-per-server in the market – upwards of 3 gigabits-per-second throughput for MP4 content using a minimum of two servers for resiliency," he said. "Typically that level of performance requires 5 to 10 servers from other vendors. As a result, content providers using the Blackwave Chorus system stand to greatly lower their server licensing costs and achieve a 3X to 5X improvement in their server rack utilization."