Wowza获得波士顿私募股权公司“重大投资”

Wowza媒体系统 从一家总部位于波士顿的私人股本公司获得了“一笔重大投资” Clearhaven伙伴. Since the financial terms are not disclosed, and Clearhaven is a relatively new firm (founded in 2019), 除了新闻稿中的一些片段和Wowza首席执行官David Stubenvoll的一些评论(见上图)，我们真的没有更多的硬数据可以分享。.

也就是说, this doesn't mean that the investment isn't big news, 这不仅是为了让Wowza在未来能够做些什么，也是为了庆祝Wowza在过去15年里取得的成就. 因此，我们将花更多的时间来了解你可以从新闻稿中收集到什么, talk a bit about Wowza's colorful backstory, and share some of our conversation with Stubenvoll.

Scanning the Press Release

In the press release, 克里斯•瑞安, managing partner at Clearhaven伙伴, shared that "Among many companies we see each year, Wowza之所以脱颖而出，是因为它作为技术领导者的声誉，以及它在一个顺风顺水的市场上大规模提供市场领先的视频流解决方案的能力.新闻稿进一步指出，“Clearhaven的投资使Wowza能够加速其领先解决方案的创新，这些解决方案以帮助客户解决复杂的视频工作流程挑战而闻名。."

Hey, I told you there wasn't a lot of hard data there.

背后的故事

Forgive me an indulgence here and let me ramble. Of all the companies in the streaming industry, Wowza is the one that feels most personal, 至少对我来说是这样, 我为它的成就庆祝，就像为侄子或最好朋友的女儿庆祝一样. 人们很难对谷歌(Google)或微软(Microsoft)等老牌科技公司感到兴奋, or behemoths like Netflix or Amazon.

But Wowza was founded by two of us, David Stubenvoll and Charlie Good, both Adobe alums. During Wowza's nascent stages, 他们指导了有史以来最重要的流媒体相关产品枢纽之一, launching their company to distribute a video messaging platform, 然后，当媒体服务器比视频消息产生更多的兴趣时，他们将注意力转移到他们开发的媒体服务器上，以驱动该平台. Thus, Wowza媒体系统 was born.

Wowza并没有发明transmuxing(也称为即时或动态包装)。, but it was one of the first to commercialize it at scale, 为流媒体发布者有效地支持多种ABR打包格式(如HLS)铺平了道路, 破折号, HDS, 和海量存储系统(MSS)中. 它们非常成功，甚至盖过了Adobe Flash Media Server的风头，导致Adobe 苏 2011年的Wowza. 但大卫再次击败了歌利亚，2015年，Adobe的声明是“settled and dismissed with prejudice.简而言之, Wowza was birthed and grew up right in front of our eyes, 成为, in the words of the press release, ，是直播解决方案的黄金标准，目前支持超过6个,000 active customers with a track record of more than 35,000 deployments worldwide."

首席执行官的采访

顺便说一下背景, I was not originally scheduled to talk to CEO David Stubenvoll; I stepped in when editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen took his cat to the emergency room for a cut paw (the cat survived and is doing well). I know Stubenvoll well enough to shake hands at a trade show, 但我们没有出现在彼此的节日贺卡清单上(如果还存在的话).

After Stubenvoll described the investment, 我问道:“为什么Clearhaven要投资一家即将被CMAF淘汰的公司??"—half joking, but genuinely interested in his response. 对于那些在通用媒体应用程序格式上不超过毫秒的人, CMAF容器格式有可能消除对传输的需要, 这是Wowza流媒体引擎和Wowza流媒体云的主要特性之一, two of Wowza's most significant products.

斯图本沃尔笑了，考虑了一下，然后回答说:“这有一部分是对的. CMAF may reduce the need for some product features, but we've innovated far beyond transmuxing in our current products, and this investment will allow us to go much further much faster."

Here are some of the other questions we addressed.

流媒体: Why take an investment? 为什么不公开呢??

Stubenvoll: We never considered going public. 这种投资和合伙关系使我们能够灵活地在更大范围内进行投资，而不受上市公司的限制和麻烦.

流媒体: What about employees and their stock options? Don't companies go public so employees can profit as well?

Stubenvoll: Clearhaven is purchasing shares and options, which allows employees to cash out of their options and stock.

(作者注: To understand the following, note that Wowza started selling the Wowza Streaming Engine, which is server software that customers can rent or buy, and then install and operate themselves. Then Wowza launched Wowza Streaming Cloud, a managed service which is based upon the Wowza Streaming Engine.]

流媒体: What will you use the money for?

Stubenvoll: Accelerating innovation and growth. That means more investment in the cloud, 使我们的SaaS服务成为Wowza流媒体引擎所提供功能的超集. We've been investing in this for a while, 今年，客户将开始看到更好的集成产品和服务的好处，这些产品和服务是高度可靠和可扩展的, and the ability to drive more configurations without coding. 我们还扩展了云服务，以便更好地集成到客户的数据集和工作流/流程中, 并扩展功能，如多云支持和自动切换，如果一个云失败.

Beyond investing in existing products, we're analyzing our enhanced go-to-market capabilities now; this could take the form of company or product acquisitions, 或者，如果这有助于发展和维持与客户的深厚关系，也可能涉及开设新的办事处.

流媒体: What's in it for Clearhaven?

Stubenvoll: Wowza's a great investment. We've been growing and profitable for a long time. 众所周知，他们需要一个退出策略，可能是公开发行或出售. 现在说什么是合适的退出还为时过早，但退出总有一天会有的.

流媒体: What else do 流媒体 readers need to know?

Stubenvoll: There will be no layoffs. Every time I bring up private equity investment, 有人暗示，裁员或某种形式的收缩即将到来. In this case, it's the opposite; Clearhaven is allowing us to invest and accelerate our growth.

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