RGB Networks Acquires RipCode

Jef Graham, CEO of RGB Networks, is excited. 他感觉到了视频领域的变化，他的公司也在采取自己的行动，即收购 RipCode.

"When I first became CEO of RGB Networks about five years ago," said Graham during a Monday phone interview, “我很惊讶，很少有公司利用运营商级硬件/软件组合来抓住视频领域的机会. 今天，似乎每个人都在试图弄清楚如何进入电子游戏."

Part of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's strategy involves a three-screen solution, 超越了以IPTV为主导的传统MSO或电信世界，进入了一个将桌面和移动设备视为IPTV同等传输平台的世界.

"We needed a three-screen strategy, which has been championed internally by Yuval Fischer, whom I hired as CTO a year ago," says Graham. "He did an evaluative matrix, 发现RipCode提供了我们移动战略所需的关键组件."

Moving Towards IPO
此次收购是一笔全股票交易，交易条款尚未公布. Graham says RGB plans to IPO in about one year's time, which was part of the appeal to RipCode's investors.

格雷厄姆表示:“我们希望在一年后进行IPO，这是我们将采取的上市策略。. 该公司目前有150名员工，收购前的估值为2亿美元, 我的投资者想了解，为什么我们需要获得一家25人公司的专业知识，而不是建立我们自己的解决方案."

"The reasons that Yuval laid out were sound,他说. “第一, he determined that best solution for video delivery to PC and mobile requires high density transcoding; we had that solution already in our Video Multiprocessing Gateway (VMG)."

“第二, 他指出，我们还需要在同一个强大的VMG平台上集成移动和PC格式传输系统," says Graham, "and that trials are underway this year, 使收购成为及时应对试验的最佳战略举措."

RGB itself is already profitable, with $150 million lifetime sales, having shipped more than 10,其九大产品家族的000个单位提供给全球200多个电缆客户, 卫星, 电信, over-the-top, and government arenas.

"Both sets of investors have chosen to invest into the new RGB," says Graham, whose current investors include Accel, Kleiner Perkins, and Comcast. “三屏战略让两组投资者都有信心，这证明了RGB的能力，也证明了RipCode在三屏战略中的关键作用，这将帮助我们实现IPO."

The new company will maintain the Austin, Texas-based presence that RipCode has had since its inception, 移动和基于英特尔的解决方案将在该地点进行审查.

When asked about competition from the likes of Israel-based Optibase是, whose MGW series offers similar 电信-grade robustness to RGB's VMG, Graham and Ramin Farassat, RGB's vice president of marketing and business development, 两家公司都表示，他们没有看到来自只采用三屏战略的公司的太大竞争.

"Optibase是 lagged behind in bringing HD to the table," says Farassat, "while we integrated HD into our chassis from the beginning. 我们看到最激烈的竞争是来自Harmonic或Envivio这样的公司, whose 1 RU servers are running on standard Intel architectures."

"These standard servers have been the only other option,他说, “而且它们没有像电信和MSO机架中大多数其他符合nebs标准的设备那样进行加固, 这意味着冗余系统方面的巨大开销，只是为了实现我们的VMG底盘固有提供的故障转移和健壮性水平."

Brendon Mills, CEO of RipCode, 他表示，能够将RipCode的软件解决方案快速整合到RGB的VMG中，对于这家规模较小的公司的移动和广告插入解决方案来说是自然而然的一步.

“将我们基于英特尔的软件/硬件解决方案与基于asic的硬件转码平台相结合具有战略意义," says Mills, 他补充说，他认为转码市场的玩家数量将在未来18个月内迅速减少.

Scalability is Key
Mills还举了一个RipCode带来的政府客户的例子. In December, RipCode宣布与Harris和Lockheed Martin合作支持Valiant Angel, 将战场上空飞行的无人驾驶飞行器(UAV)或“无人驾驶飞机”的视频传输到地面上使用的战区战场设备的战略军事努力.

All this convergence on a robust platform isn't inexpensive, 但格雷厄姆解释说，有必要为电信或MSO环境提供一个大枪解决方案.

"On the high end," said Graham, "a fully loaded VMG chassis might sell for $1 million, and would be capable of doing 400 streams of video. In one trial example, 我们在有线电视公司接收一个流，但需要发送14个流到IPTV, desktop and mobile platforms. 我们觉得我们有唯一的完全集成的解决方案，可以扩展和满足视频服务提供商的可靠性标准."

"The chassis is integrated into a single management system, and all modules are hot-swappable," says Graham. “然而，每个底盘都可以从一个模块开始-转码或广告插入或移动交付-然后扩展到每个底盘的多个模块."

"Not only do we have ad insertion for IPTV, 但收购RipCode为我们提供了一个完整的移动广告插入解决方案," says Graham. “我们认为，我们将使用多种处理器类型来提供广告插入的整体解决方案, FPGA; for transcoding, ASIC; for mobile delivery, Flash and Silverlight and Intel blades."

Graham最后举了一个典型的客户购买多底盘解决方案的例子.

典型解决方案中的第一个机箱将处理摄取并可能从MPEG-2转码到H.264, or vice-versa," Graham says. "The second chassis might handle national ad insertion, 而随后的位置可能每个都有一个机箱来处理本地电台摄取和本地AD插入."

合并后的新公司目前的估值超过2.2亿美元.

RGB Networks Offers VMG-8 for TV Everywhere Streaming

新模型适用于小型或中型操作或边缘部署.

8月18日