It’s always amazing to see how a negative blip in new technology adoption that’s otherwise bursting with robust activity can be blown way out of proportion by naysayers who think there’s nothing to the larger reality.
Such was our reaction to a recent Linkedin post from streaming media commentator and event impresario Dan Rayburn, who was responding to word that real-time streaming platform operator Phenix Real Time Solutions is going under. While, as Rayburn noted, the firm’s VC backer KB Partners, after failing to find a buyer, is taking bids for the assets, we understand from industry insiders that Phenix CEO Roy Reichbach and possibly other senior executives are busy looking for investors to back a new venture in the real-time streaming market.
The Rayburn take and that of many others but not all who commented on his post is reminiscent of many past instances where a prominent failure was seen as proof the venture’s motivating vision was fatally flawed. In fact, veterans of late ‘90s startups, many of whom are now Silicon Valley billionaires, probably get a good laugh remembering the “told-you-so” chorus that greeted them with the 2000 internet bust.
Rather than attesting, as Rayburn claims, to there being “insufficient demand” or a “lack of application use cases” for a business based on real-time streaming, the Phenix demise is really a matter of strategic failure where a whopping amount of investment capital amounting to $40 million as of April 2021 was gambled on a platform-as-a-service venture that went into operation ahead of the surging demand that anyone who reads this publication knows is out there.
As we’ve reported, demand for real-time streaming infrastructure is blossoming across myriad industry, institutional and government use cases. But given the scale and operational adjustments involved in moving streaming from the prevailing HTTP streaming foundation, buyers are taking a lot of time to test the viability of chosen solutions to meet their goals.
Phenix isn’t alone suffering through the build-it-and-they-will-come approach to offering support for real-time multidirectional streaming at massive scales, which in this case entailed equipping a purported 34 PoPs globally for CDN-like execution of WebRTC transport on the Oracle OCI and Google Cloud platforms. We know of other shoes that could be dropping as the risks of taking such high-cost plunges into an unproven market take their toll.
After all, how does anyone prove a market for a new, minimally implemented technology that’s positioned to disrupt established norms? When the answer is one step at a time and that time can drag on for years, VC-backed hares might be at a disadvantage against innovating tortoises taking a more measured approach.
Work-intensive and low on returns as it might be at the outset, the build-it-as-they-come tact is starting to pay off for suppliers who have been putting their WebRTC-based software stacks to use in an incremental dev/ops frame of mind. And there’s something to be said for driving revenue-generating innovation by working with customers to adjust or add SDKs for specific use cases rather than providing a pre-set infrastructure with limited room for use-case adjustments.
When we met with Phenix COO Kyle Banks and chief product officer Bill Wishon at the NAB Show in April, we asked about the flexibility of their platform to serve all the needs emerging beyond the M&E sector their marketing messages had focused on over more than a decade of operations. Wishon replied, “Our customers can use our platform to support whatever they want – surveillance, esports, gaming, virtual casino gambling, sports wagering with in-game betting. We’re aiming to be the platform of choice for any industry’s use case.”
But the Phenix website’s messaging focuses almost exclusively on M&E use cases that have long dominated public discussion about the need for real-time streaming. For casual observers, not to mention would-be users, this provides a misleading perspective on market dimensions.
A section on the Phenix site devoted to describing supported use cases lists broadcast (“real-time video delivery synchronized across a worldwide audience”), multi-camera viewing, watch parties, “celebrity connect” (“a new level of enabling a live, interactive conversation between fans and a moderator or host”), and auctions plus one use case that can be applied to any scenario described as involving groups user experience. Looking back over the last four years of Phenix blogs and press releases, we saw sports betting was also emphasized as an important use case.
But we found no mention of the many other areas where the need for real-time interactive streaming support is creating serious business opportunities for platform providers, including:
Putting all this together with the M&E applications mentioned by Phenix, it’s hard to imagine anyone purporting to know what’s going on with video streaming can claim there’s a lack of application use cases with sufficient demand to keep real-time streaming platform suppliers afloat. We don’t know all the ins and outs behind the Phenix stumble, but lack of demand at this moment in time isn’t one of them.
For those insights we’ll defer to all the Phenix customers that are scrambling to find real-time streaming support elsewhere. But it’s worth noting our perspective on developments includes awareness that Phenix wasn’t above making claims that should not be taken seriously by observers weighing what the Phenix collapse means for the real-time streaming sector.
Notably, it’s not true now nor was it when the statement was made in a September 2023 blog that “Phenix is the only real-time video streaming platform to provide broadcasters and rights holders content protection and monetization.” The reference was to the Phenix announcement that it was the first supplier to enable server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and a multi-digital rights management (DRM) content protection solution with real-time streaming.
In truth, nine months earlier Castlabs, the same company Phenix said it was partnering with to enable its DRM-first breakthrough, announced it was supplying real-time streaming provider Red5 support for DRM, which Red5 has been marketing as a capability of its Experience Delivery Network (XDN) architecture ever since.
We’re also aware of U.S. Patent 12,256,119, which was issued to Red5 in mid-2022 for a comprehensive approach to SSAI that included multiple approaches to enabling monetization in the interactive real-time video domain that went well beyond the dynamic ad placement technology used with conventional streaming. We’re told that, since then, Red5 has been offering this solution as well as a forensic watermarking capability covered by the same patent, albeit without the marketing ballyhoo common to such breakthroughs.
“I guess we’ve been too busy to focus on publicity,” says Red5 CEO Chris Allen, although he does acknowledge the company has stepped up its efforts to get the word out on what it’s doing, including appearances with partners at the latest NAB and IBC conferences featuring demos of XDN applications. Some of this is covered in videos from those shows on our site.
Perhaps the most egregious instance of misleading commentary issued by Phenix was the claim, attributed to CEO Reichbach in the September 2023 blog cited above that “Phenix has been the only company to deliver real-time streaming at massive scale while synchronizing streams across all devices.”
A look at how far this claim is from reality can be found in the review of real-time interactive streaming providers we published as we were launching UltraMedia Pipeline last year, which we’ll be updating soon in light of the entrance of new players as well as the latest developments surrounding others. Meanwhile, these recently published articles cover new developments within the circle of suppliers relying on WebRTC and activities exclusive of WebRTC that aim to satisfy real-time streaming demand.
We reached out to Phenix for comment about what’s happening with the firm but received no response. When discrepancies in their claims of exclusive breakthroughs were brought to their attention at our NAB meeting, Banks and Wishon seemed genuinely surprised that they had competition for bragging rights in these areas, which also included assertions that their multiviewing solution was a unique innovation (see our coverage on this topic here).
Our point in noting these discrepancies isn’t to denigrate the integrity of Phenix executives. Rather, it’s essential that decision makers shaping strategies in the real-time streaming arena have a better idea of what’s going on than the perspective offered by Rayburn and others who dismiss the idea that there’s a real business for suppliers in this space.
The real challenge for decision makers has to do with finding solutions that can accommodate what they’re looking for in sync with what they view as the optimal moment for moving ahead with real-time streaming implementations. If needs are immediate, there are suppliers to choose from with confidence that rigorous due diligence will be rewarded with strong, reliable support, which, by the way, is becoming much more cost effective than it once was owing to the growing “pay-as-you-grow” pricing strategies taking shape across the market – something we’ll be providing details on shortly.
But it’s also important to recognize that real-time streaming is a fast-evolving technological environment where the best solutions available for today’s needs might not be the best options for needs emerging a year or two from now. Staying on top of developments is every bit as important as avoiding getting sidetracked by misinformation. And, in the case of meeting immediate needs, due diligence includes ensuring the real-time streaming architecture under consideration now has the flexibility with management open to change that can be counted on for adaptation to meaningful improvements in transport technologies that are sure to come .
Such was our reaction to a recent Linkedin post from streaming media commentator and event impresario Dan Rayburn, who was responding to word that real-time streaming platform operator Phenix Real Time Solutions is going under. While, as Rayburn noted, the firm’s VC backer KB Partners, after failing to find a buyer, is taking bids for the assets, we understand from industry insiders that Phenix CEO Roy Reichbach and possibly other senior executives are busy looking for investors to back a new venture in the real-time streaming market.
The Rayburn take and that of many others but not all who commented on his post is reminiscent of many past instances where a prominent failure was seen as proof the venture’s motivating vision was fatally flawed. In fact, veterans of late ‘90s startups, many of whom are now Silicon Valley billionaires, probably get a good laugh remembering the “told-you-so” chorus that greeted them with the 2000 internet bust.
Rather than attesting, as Rayburn claims, to there being “insufficient demand” or a “lack of application use cases” for a business based on real-time streaming, the Phenix demise is really a matter of strategic failure where a whopping amount of investment capital amounting to $40 million as of April 2021 was gambled on a platform-as-a-service venture that went into operation ahead of the surging demand that anyone who reads this publication knows is out there.
As we’ve reported, demand for real-time streaming infrastructure is blossoming across myriad industry, institutional and government use cases. But given the scale and operational adjustments involved in moving streaming from the prevailing HTTP streaming foundation, buyers are taking a lot of time to test the viability of chosen solutions to meet their goals.
Phenix isn’t alone suffering through the build-it-and-they-will-come approach to offering support for real-time multidirectional streaming at massive scales, which in this case entailed equipping a purported 34 PoPs globally for CDN-like execution of WebRTC transport on the Oracle OCI and Google Cloud platforms. We know of other shoes that could be dropping as the risks of taking such high-cost plunges into an unproven market take their toll.
After all, how does anyone prove a market for a new, minimally implemented technology that’s positioned to disrupt established norms? When the answer is one step at a time and that time can drag on for years, VC-backed hares might be at a disadvantage against innovating tortoises taking a more measured approach.
Work-intensive and low on returns as it might be at the outset, the build-it-as-they-come tact is starting to pay off for suppliers who have been putting their WebRTC-based software stacks to use in an incremental dev/ops frame of mind. And there’s something to be said for driving revenue-generating innovation by working with customers to adjust or add SDKs for specific use cases rather than providing a pre-set infrastructure with limited room for use-case adjustments.
When we met with Phenix COO Kyle Banks and chief product officer Bill Wishon at the NAB Show in April, we asked about the flexibility of their platform to serve all the needs emerging beyond the M&E sector their marketing messages had focused on over more than a decade of operations. Wishon replied, “Our customers can use our platform to support whatever they want – surveillance, esports, gaming, virtual casino gambling, sports wagering with in-game betting. We’re aiming to be the platform of choice for any industry’s use case.”
But the Phenix website’s messaging focuses almost exclusively on M&E use cases that have long dominated public discussion about the need for real-time streaming. For casual observers, not to mention would-be users, this provides a misleading perspective on market dimensions.
A section on the Phenix site devoted to describing supported use cases lists broadcast (“real-time video delivery synchronized across a worldwide audience”), multi-camera viewing, watch parties, “celebrity connect” (“a new level of enabling a live, interactive conversation between fans and a moderator or host”), and auctions plus one use case that can be applied to any scenario described as involving groups user experience. Looking back over the last four years of Phenix blogs and press releases, we saw sports betting was also emphasized as an important use case.
But we found no mention of the many other areas where the need for real-time interactive streaming support is creating serious business opportunities for platform providers, including:
- Surveillance, a huge category, which, as we’ve reported, encompasses highway traffic management, emergency responders’ tracking of fire, crimes and other events, drone-mounted air, land and sea monitoring, utility and factory infrastructure maintenance, battlefield operations and anything else where real-time streaming can be used to deliver compilations of live camera feeds from large swaths of territory for analysis at remote control centers.
- Remote production of sports and other live events, where real-time interactive connectivity across multiple locations allows for simultaneous collaboration in production workflows;
- Video-aided interactions between doctors and patients in telemedicine services;
- Live shopping and other interactive e-commerce applications, which encompass much more than the support Phenix describes for live online auctions;
- Remote video-based collaboration in all types of engineering and architectural design operations;
- The real-time video support in extended reality applications that’s essential to bringing realistically rendered audio and viewscape responses to users’ body and eye movements in network-connected engagements targeted to game playing, virtual club socializing, online casino gambling, 360 degree immersive sports viewing, and collaborative enterprise activities such as police training, medical research, automotive and aerospace design, and countless other enterprise workflows that have become the big drivers behind VR adoption.
Putting all this together with the M&E applications mentioned by Phenix, it’s hard to imagine anyone purporting to know what’s going on with video streaming can claim there’s a lack of application use cases with sufficient demand to keep real-time streaming platform suppliers afloat. We don’t know all the ins and outs behind the Phenix stumble, but lack of demand at this moment in time isn’t one of them.
For those insights we’ll defer to all the Phenix customers that are scrambling to find real-time streaming support elsewhere. But it’s worth noting our perspective on developments includes awareness that Phenix wasn’t above making claims that should not be taken seriously by observers weighing what the Phenix collapse means for the real-time streaming sector.
Notably, it’s not true now nor was it when the statement was made in a September 2023 blog that “Phenix is the only real-time video streaming platform to provide broadcasters and rights holders content protection and monetization.” The reference was to the Phenix announcement that it was the first supplier to enable server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and a multi-digital rights management (DRM) content protection solution with real-time streaming.
In truth, nine months earlier Castlabs, the same company Phenix said it was partnering with to enable its DRM-first breakthrough, announced it was supplying real-time streaming provider Red5 support for DRM, which Red5 has been marketing as a capability of its Experience Delivery Network (XDN) architecture ever since.
We’re also aware of U.S. Patent 12,256,119, which was issued to Red5 in mid-2022 for a comprehensive approach to SSAI that included multiple approaches to enabling monetization in the interactive real-time video domain that went well beyond the dynamic ad placement technology used with conventional streaming. We’re told that, since then, Red5 has been offering this solution as well as a forensic watermarking capability covered by the same patent, albeit without the marketing ballyhoo common to such breakthroughs.
“I guess we’ve been too busy to focus on publicity,” says Red5 CEO Chris Allen, although he does acknowledge the company has stepped up its efforts to get the word out on what it’s doing, including appearances with partners at the latest NAB and IBC conferences featuring demos of XDN applications. Some of this is covered in videos from those shows on our site.
Perhaps the most egregious instance of misleading commentary issued by Phenix was the claim, attributed to CEO Reichbach in the September 2023 blog cited above that “Phenix has been the only company to deliver real-time streaming at massive scale while synchronizing streams across all devices.”
A look at how far this claim is from reality can be found in the review of real-time interactive streaming providers we published as we were launching UltraMedia Pipeline last year, which we’ll be updating soon in light of the entrance of new players as well as the latest developments surrounding others. Meanwhile, these recently published articles cover new developments within the circle of suppliers relying on WebRTC and activities exclusive of WebRTC that aim to satisfy real-time streaming demand.
We reached out to Phenix for comment about what’s happening with the firm but received no response. When discrepancies in their claims of exclusive breakthroughs were brought to their attention at our NAB meeting, Banks and Wishon seemed genuinely surprised that they had competition for bragging rights in these areas, which also included assertions that their multiviewing solution was a unique innovation (see our coverage on this topic here).
Our point in noting these discrepancies isn’t to denigrate the integrity of Phenix executives. Rather, it’s essential that decision makers shaping strategies in the real-time streaming arena have a better idea of what’s going on than the perspective offered by Rayburn and others who dismiss the idea that there’s a real business for suppliers in this space.
The real challenge for decision makers has to do with finding solutions that can accommodate what they’re looking for in sync with what they view as the optimal moment for moving ahead with real-time streaming implementations. If needs are immediate, there are suppliers to choose from with confidence that rigorous due diligence will be rewarded with strong, reliable support, which, by the way, is becoming much more cost effective than it once was owing to the growing “pay-as-you-grow” pricing strategies taking shape across the market – something we’ll be providing details on shortly.
But it’s also important to recognize that real-time streaming is a fast-evolving technological environment where the best solutions available for today’s needs might not be the best options for needs emerging a year or two from now. Staying on top of developments is every bit as important as avoiding getting sidetracked by misinformation. And, in the case of meeting immediate needs, due diligence includes ensuring the real-time streaming architecture under consideration now has the flexibility with management open to change that can be counted on for adaptation to meaningful improvements in transport technologies that are sure to come .