IBM Acquires Clearleap To Bolster Its Cloud Portfolio
International Business Machines’s (NYSE:IBM) push in cloud computing continues with the acquisition of Clearleap, a video services company, for an undisclosed amount. [1] Clearleap will be integrated into the IBM Cloud platform to manage, monetize and grow user video experiences, and deliver them securely over the Internet and mobile devices.
IBM has said that computer systems are unable to handle about 80% of the world’s data, which is unstructured and much of that is video. Since Clearleap specializes in managed video services across multi-screen environments, this acquisition will help the company to address the shortcomings in its cloud portfolio, specifically overcome the problem of unstructured data that is said to “dark”, or invisible to the system.
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What is Clearleap?
Clearleap is a video platform that enables massive scalability of videos, thus helping its clients to ramp up and support millions of concurrent users within seconds to support special events. Within a short time, it has marquee clients such as HBO, A+E Networks, the NFL, BBC America, Sony Movie Channel, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon Communications, among others.
Clearleap has an open API framework (and infrastructure adapters) that lets a company build video into applications for distribution and to adapt to specific business needs such as workflow automation and advanced analytics. The framework also enables access to key third-party applications that customers may already have in their environments. [2] In addition, the Clearleap platform includes subscription and monetization services that help a company to narrow its monetization strategy (Audio Video On Demand, Subscription Video On Demand, SVOD-Over The Top), and data centers from which to host digital video assets. As a result, organizations can provide their clients with secure, reliable, personalized and complete multiscreen video experiences. Its solutions include premium content streaming across multi-screen entities, centralized workflow management, video management for recording delayed ad impressions (which occur nearly 75 hrs after the original content was shown) and authentication services. [3]
IBM will offer the Clearleap APIs on IBM Bluemix in 2016 to enable clients to build new video offerings quickly and easily. Additionally, it plans to offer Clearleap’s video services through its Cloud data centers around the world, thus providing clients global 24×7 service and technical support for rapid problem identification and resolution capabilities. It also hopes that by leveraging Clearleap’s platform, IBM’s clients will have the ability to securely share data and content across geographies and across hybrid clouds.
At present, we have a $154 Trefis price estimate for IBM, which is about 13% higher than the current market price.
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