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Alcatel-Lucent’s AppGlide Launch Reveals New Video Market Competitive Imperatives | Jun 3, 2011 | Digital Media Infrastructure | Analyst: Yoav Schreiber Event Summary June 1, 2011 -- Alcatel-Lucent announced a new managed service to help broadband service providers measure subscriber quality of experience (QoE) for online video. AppGlide Video Analytics, developed and commercialized by Alcatel-Lucent’s Ventures organization, offers service providers cross-correlated video analytics, providing insight into online video consumption, quality, and performance to help them ensure consumer satisfaction, reduce subscriber turnover, and increase revenues. The service is currently available. | Read Press Release | Quick Take Analytical Summary • Current Perspective: Very positive on Alcatel-Lucent’s launch of its AppGlide Video Analytics service, because it extends the company’s reach across three domains key to its long-term competiveness. First, it enables Alcatel-Lucent to participate in the still-nascent OTT video market with a differentiated approach. Second, it broadens Alcatel-Lucent’s solution portfolio to include data analytics – an increasingly important and competitive area that remains relatively untapped by traditional cable, telco, satellite, and wireless service providers. Third, it expands Alcatel-Lucent’s managed services expertise to include a hosted offering for its AppGlide solution. However, tempering this (otherwise very) positive outlook is the fact that AppGlide remains unproven as a commercial offering, and it would have benefited from tighter linkages to the company’s Application Enablement initiative, which is well suited to unlocking the value of service provider networking assets and data. • Vendor Importance: Very high to Alcatel-Lucent, because the company needs a differentiated approach to build a presence in key markets, such as cable and OTT video. Instead of delivering yet another platform for powering OTT services, Alcatel-Lucent is focusing on extracting value from OTT video platforms/delivery networks with a managed services approach based on analytics. Alcatel-Lucent’s Interactive Media Management platform already powers broadband video services, such as the HbbTV service at Tele Columbus in Germany (please see Alcatel-Lucent Deepens Managed Services Credentials with Tele Columbus HbbTV Service, May 06, 2011). The AppGlide announcement demonstrates Alcatel-Lucent’s creative capabilities, converts a research concept into a commercial solution, and offers an innovative solution for capturing, analyzing, and correlating data from multiple sources. • Market Impact: Very high on both the digital media infrastructure and service provider infrastructure vendor-managed services markets. It is becoming very clear that managed/hosted services are a critical component for video service delivery, with nearly all the major solution vendors vying for a piece of it. Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson are each providing hosted solutions to power broadband video services (in Germany and Singapore, respectively), while companies such as Cisco and Motorola are offering hosted switched digital video (SDV) services to enable smaller cable operators to take advantage of a complex and expensive infrastructure investment. Although AppGlide is a discrete solution for video analytics, it should serve as a call to arms for vendors to bulk up on their managed service credentials targeting the video market. CLIENTS ONLY Current Perspective Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses Response & Recommendations Buyer Actions | Client access - Full report in Digital Media Infrastructure | More information Top Top

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Alcatel-Lucent launches advanced online video analytic service to enable broadband service providers to improve quality of experience for subscribers

Hosted service measures quality of online video from the end-user’s perspective, giving service providers unprecedented insight and enables improved consumer satisfaction

Paris, June 1, 2011 — Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced AppGlide Video Analytics, a new managed service to help broadband service providers measure the quality of experience (QoE) for both free and paid online video from an end-user viewer’s perspective.

Developed and commercialized by Alcatel-Lucent’s Ventures organization, which is part of Bell Labs, it arms service providers with the industry’s most comprehensive set of cross-correlated video analytics. AppGlide tools give unprecedented insight into quality, trends and issues. It enables telcos, cable companies and other service providers to quickly take action to ensure consumer satisfaction, reduce subscriber turnover and increase revenues.

The new service, available for trial now, is expected to help broadband service providers improve the customer experience.

In addition to identifying and effectively addressing content delivery-quality issues, AppGlide Video Analytics delivers metrics that give service providers a better understanding of viewing trends and overall network performance. The cloud-based solution combines data from video player plug-ins, QoE agents, content-delivery network devices (CDNs) and routers to deliver a truly holistic view of quality of experience for subscribers. In addition, it provides insights into viewing trends, content usage, CDN and network performance. It shows the volume and quality of video being delivered; gives visibility into viewer behaviors (what is being watched, how long, why viewers stopped watching etc.); and helps service providers monitor, and isolate CDN performance.

Significantly, AppGlide is the only commercially available solution that provides cross-correlation between these disparate data sources, allowing for the greatest possible insight and intelligence. This visibility enables service providers to offer the most popular content and fine-tune their delivery strategy to retain current customers, attract new customers and generate additional advertising and content-delivery revenue.

Video explosion expected to challenge quality and subscriber quality expectations

AppGlide Video Analytics enables service providers to effectively cope with the explosive growth of online video content moving through their networks. In March 2011 alone, more than 174 million people in the United States watched an average of 14.8 hours of online video content, according to recent data from comScore Video Metrix.

Studies cite poor quality-of-experience as a primary driver of broadband subscriber churn. With video, the situation is especially challenging for service providers, as subscribers are accustomed to broadcast-quality HD video and myriad variables can affect the quality of online video, many of which are beyond the service provider’s direct control.

Quality problems can originate at an off-network CDN service, the original content provider or content aggregator. The service provider’s network then passes this poor-quality content onto its customers, who often blame the service provider for the poor quality. By correlating actual subscribers’ viewing experiences and preferences with network conditions, AppGlide Video Analytics provides insight into the potential sources of the problem. Service providers can then take the necessary corrective action, which may include installing an on-net CDN in their own network. These steps will ultimately allow the service provider to provide a better customer experience for on-line video-delivery, from start to finish.

“Online video is growing at a fast clip, and service providers are establishing more of a presence in the digital content ecosystem. To stay ahead of the pack, service providers must deliver quality video experiences for their subscribers and leverage their infrastructure to obtain insight into ways to increase revenue and further monetize their networks," said Melanie Posey, IDC, Research Vice President, Hosting & Managed Network Services. “To this end, analytics is a key ingredient in the online video business. The cross-correlation capabilities of Alcatel-Lucent's AppGlide technology offer service providers a unique, metrics-based view into end-user quality of experience, viewer engagement and network performance. Armed with this data, service providers can make better decisions about all aspects of their online video-delivery businesses.”

“Having access to the individual data sources is meaningful but—according to service providers we’ve spoken with—the cross-correlation of this information is powerful and unique to AppGlide,” said Mark Peterson, general manager of the Alcatel-Lucent AppGlide venture. “For example, being able to see that a viewer stopped watching a video after only a few minutes, and this coincided with poor quality-of-experience will enable the provider to take very specific remedial steps.”

Source: Alcatel-Lucent