Ooyala, a premium services, online video platform (OVP) announced yesterday that they’ve signed a strategic partnership deal with the UK’s leading newspaper and online news site, the Telegraph Media Group. The announcement came shortly after another International partnership with Japan’s NTT, was established. Their growth outside of the US marks relatively new territory for the online video platform as it races to enter a rich environment for online video services.
I had a chance to speak with Ooyala’s Co-founder and President of Products, Bismarck Lepe. The following is an email interview we conducted together whereby he was kind enough to answer a few questions regarding the announcements as well as their company growth and goals for expanding further outside the US.
VidCompare:
Ooyala stated back in October, when you received your most recent round of funding, that you’d be using some of it to expand Internationally increasing both footprint (staff) and clientele. Can you comment on this growth as it pertains to staffing outside of the London office?
Ooyala:
Just last week we announced that we are expanding into the Japanese market. In the coming months we will be making a few more announcements about expansion into mainland Europe and Latin America.
VidCompare:
Are there other partnerships in play outside of TMG and NTT?
Ooyala:
Yes. We have both customer and channel relationship announcements coming down the line. Our field sales team continues to sign large platform customers and our business development team has been focused on signing relationships with partners who will help Ooyala grow its global footprint.
VidCompare:
TMG has been a Brightcove customer for a few years and Brightcove has had International presence for over two years. Are you targeting Brightcove customers specifically in an effort to expand Internationally?
Ooyala:
No. We obviously compete against them in the market, but the vast majority of our customer wins actually come from companies who are moving off of their DIY solutions to a 3rd party platform. We haven’t even scratched the surface of total opportunities to be focusing on only ripping out Brightcove installs. Outside of the UK, US and Germany, we rarely see Brightcove in a deal.
VidCompare:
Ooyala is actively increasing headcount with what appears to be over 30 positions currently open. Are these both International and Domestic openings?
Ooyala:
Yes. We are hiring across all division in all markets.
VidCompare:
What will these positions be focused on?
Ooyala:
Across the board: Sales, Sales Engineering, Marketing, Account Management, Finance, Operations and Engineering
VidCompare:
The partnership with TMG is unique in that you are actually co-habitating with their staff in London and are working together to build out the new relationship. Is the first such relationship whereby you partner with a customer to co-develop the product?
Ooyala:
We are doing something similar with NTT. But the TMG relationship is unique because we are committing engineering resources to open-ended projects that will be targeted to the print industry. Unlike other relationships where engineering is used to complete a statement of work, this development relationship is about quick iteration of new concepts and development of products and features that will gain some reasonable traction.
VidCompare:
Has this partnership been setup this way due to the unique nature of their product requiring custom development of your existing services or will you be developing new services for them specifically?
Ooyala:
No. This is completely new ground for new product development and innovation.
Thank you for your this opportunity Bismarck.
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