General

New Motorola VOD Server Uses Adaptive Media Management

March 17, 2009 : BY Motorola

motorola-b-3-b3-server-vod

This morning Motorola launched the B-3 on-demand server, a Flash-based video server that handles anywhere between a few hundred and few thousand streams. It’s a complement to the Motorola B-1 and uses Motorola’s Adaptive Media Management (AMM) framework.

Although the tangible piece of this announcement is the new server, the real news is how the hardware operates in an evolving VOD network. Specifically, we’re now looking at VOD networks that will start to operate like content delivery networks (CDNs). As on-demand libraries grow, operators are seeking out new and better solutions for managing content at the edge of their networks, keeping in mind the need to optimize both storage and streaming resources. Motorola’s complete on-demand portfolio, including the B-3, is designed for this evolving VOD network, and has both the hardware and software to make on-demand delivery as efficient as possible.

As briefly as possible, the Motorola portfolio includes

  • The Motorola B-1, the world’s most widely deployed solid-state on-demand server
  • The Motorola B-3, which can act as either a main library storage center in a smaller network or an edge server in a larger network,
  • The Motorola CPS1000, Motorola’s Content Propagation System which helps distribute content and assign streaming resources

Motorola’s ability to help determine where content should be stored and how it should be streamed comes from years of analyzing data from B-1 deployments around the world. The B-1 uses a solid-state architecture and supports local disk storage or a networked library server. After hitting 900 thousand streams with the B-1, there is a lot of data available on how video is accessed from both short-term and longer-term storage. From that data, Motorola has developed algorithms for the most  efficient management of on-demand content.

More to come on the B-3 and the whole on-demand platform at The Cable Show starting April 1st. I’ll be on site, and I expect on-demand will be a key topic at the show.