ExtendMedia inks deal for content management system with NYC cableco
Canadian New Media
May 30, 2005
A new contract with NYC-based Cablevision is the latest in a series of sales of ExtendMedia's OpenCASE content management system as the Canadian new media company seeks to capitalize on the “triple-play” trend in the communications industry. Cablevision, a cableco serving over three million customers in the Big Apple, has licensed OpenCASE to provide broadband services to its customers. Specific details about the deal are under tight wraps, but the OpenCASE product is touted by Extend as offering communications companies the ability to provide customer self-care, triple play (bundles of television, voice and Internet services) marketing, customer profiling, service personalization, asset management, content distribution management and device management. The Cablevision deal, says Extend VP of sales Erik Davis, comes as telcos, cablecos and new entrants into telephony and television find their margins squeezed and are searching for new revenue sources and operational efficiencies.
Davis says the competitive challenges to incumbent telcos and cableco/satellite DTH companies comes not only from each other, but from a host of new operators that often operate virtually. Content owners such as World Wrestling Entertainment and ESPN have begun using digital IP networks to market their wares directly to consumers, and companies such as Vonage have recently begun to compete for customers' telephone lines without owning traditional phone networks. As content shifts increasingly to IP networks, consumed by customers over broadband pipes and through home networks to multiple devices, Davis says, operators of all sizes face the challenge of managing their distribution, which is where, he argues, ExtendMedia stands to benefit.
The company's OpenCASE 2.0 product, announced last year, sits on top of many of the systems used by operators to manage credit card transactions, for example, or digital rights management, and to provide a virtual central back office for command and control.
“If you're dealing with digital rights management, for example, it's very easy to encrypt a file and post it on the web site. It's hard to encrypt 10,000 files and to manage that process and to have them going over half a dozen distribution channels. So, for content providers, as they start to grapple with what does it really mean to go direct: well, there's all of these systems that a distributor - a cable operator or a satellite operator - has in place. They have back office systems, billing systems. They have security systems, which are traditionally conditional access, but are increasingly becoming DRM-based systems. They have delivery systems, things that authorize content to go out to the customer, and deliver it. These are not physical networks because they can leverage the IP networks, but they still need a back office environment in order to be able to manage it. That's where our OpenCASE product fits in and gives them the ability to go in and manage that equation.”
He notes that the OpenCASE product is “relatively” turnkey, since most of the other systems with which it has interfaces, such as for credit card payments or to DRM encryption systems, are well-established and with “clean well-understood inputs and outputs”. For that reason, too, Davis says ExtendMedia is comfortable with the fast changing standards in, for example, digital rights management, where there are several competing standards each with their own political luggage.
The deal with Cablevision comes on the heels of a December 2004 contract for its OpenCASE system signed with Manitoba Telecom (CNM, Dec. 6/04). It's likely, however, that the greater proportion of sales will come from the U.S, as was the case this spring when Extend made a similar pact with wrestling giant WWE (CNM, April 6/05).
Davis adds his voice to a growing chorus of Canadian content producers and others who note the growing divide between takeup of digitally delivered content in the U.S. and here.
“From a sales perspective we've always been very successful in working with U.S. customers. In Canada over the last several years we've done quite a bit of work with BCE, Manitoba Telecom, but, frankly, the content community isn't quite as mature as in the States. It's a very different environment. It's heavily regulated up here and the competitive incentives, frankly, are not the same as they are in the U.S...They do a very good job at creating the content, but in terms of evolving the distribution channels it's been behind where the U.S. is right now.”
Though not entirely responsible for the gap, which will likely mean greater opportunity to sell its products into the American market, the CRTC must shoulder some the burden, Davis says.
“I've learned not to make any predictions about what the CRTC will do, because every time I think I have a logical approach for it, it turns out to be wrong. Frankly, I think anyone who's an observer of the CRTC will say they've been giving very mixed messages over the last several years about how they intend to evolve their organization and the regulation of content as the lines start blurring between traditional television distribution and Internet distribution.”
