In a bid to tap the growing market for Internet video streaming on multiple screens – computer, TV and mobile device – Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO-Q is buying a privately owned tech company that has most of its employees in Toronto.
ExtendMedia, headquartered in Newton, Mass., has large telecom customers such as BCE Inc., Telus Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. using its content management system. Of ExtendMedia’s 52 employees, 35 are in Toronto, the site of its production facilities.
Its technology, called OpenCase, allows companies to provide movies, television shows and other videos to customers on different platforms. The technology is tailored to reach various types of operating systems and mobile devices.
In its arrangement with BCE’s Bell, for example, ExtendMedia provides the infrastructure that allows subscribers of the Movie Network to watch films and TV shows on their computers. Another customer, Onet.pl, Poland’s largest Internet portal, uses OpenCase to stream movies and television shows online free, as well as pay-per-view and ad-supported revenue models.
“Service providers need different forms for all consumers and devices,” noted ExtendMedia president Keith Kocho, who founded the company 19 years ago.
The purchase deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Financial terms and other details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Kip Compton, a general manager for California-based Cisco, expects most ExtendMedia employees to stay on as employees of Cisco. The network giant also plans to invest in ExtendMedia’s video-streaming business, he said Thursday.
“Really the genesis of our interest is the market and where our customers are going,” Mr. Compton said. “We’ll be extending investment on those teams.”
ExtendMedia’s content management system could also be useful to Cisco’s corporate customers for internal user-generated content, said Henry Dewing, an analyst with Forrester, a technology and market research company.
A manager, for example, could create briefing or training videos for employees and send it to their smart phones and televisions. “Everything you do in an e-mail today can be done over video,” he said.
In recent years, telecoms and entertainment companies have moved to provide content across a variety of screens, including television, PCs, laptops and mobile devices.
AT&T, for example, has broadcast events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Masters tournament on IPTV, on the Web and on subscribers’ mobile devices. And Time Warner Inc. partnered last year with Internet service provider Comcast Corp. to make TBS and TNT programming available free online.
