On this episode of Eye on Business Video, I’m joined by Neal Stanton, Senior Vice President of Alliances at Vbrick, for a conversation on the evolving role of networking infrastructure used to distribute one-to-many video behind the corporate firewall.
The market for “Enterprise Content Distribution Network” (ECDN) solutions is shifting rapidly. As more organizations embrace large-scale webcasting for employee communications and townhall meetings, their need for a cohesive strategy for managing the flow of video in the corporate network becomes increasingly apparent.
Video is a bulky type of data that can clog corporate networks when hundreds or thousands of employees click to watch a live webcast at the same time. ECDNs are tools that help organizations disseminate video more efficiently, enabling the content to be distributed without crashing the corporate network.
To varying degrees, Microsoft, Google and Zoom all have initiated efforts to offer corporate video networking capabilities as part of their unified communications platform solutions. And Vbrick in late 2022 expanded its own networking product offering with the acquisition of Ramp – a company that had focused exclusively on developing enterprise video networking solutions compatible with a broad range of video content creation and webcasting solutions.
Stanton, the former chief executive officer of Ramp who joined Vbrick following the acquisition, discussed the following issues during this conversation.
- What is the importance of implementing “open” ECDN solutions capable of interoperating with multiple vendors?
- Following the Ramp acquisition, how will Vbrick position itself as an enterprise streaming partner?
- What are the advantages to having multiple technology options for facilitating video distribution on the corporate network?
- What role do security issues play in the corporate selection of video distribution technologies?
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Transcript:
Steve Vonder Haar: I’m Steve Vonder Haar. Welcome to this edition of Eye on Business Video. Joining us this time. Neal Stanton, senior Vice President of Alliances at Brick. Welcome, Neal.
Neal Stanton: Oh, thanks for having me, Steve. It’s always a pleasure.
Steve Vonder Haar: Now, I was talking with you a month ago and you weren’t the senior Vice President of Alliances for Vbrick. You were CEO of Ramp. What’s happened in the past month?
Neal Stanton: Just a little. We had the holidays, a little bit of fun, but no, in all seriousness. So Ramp had been running through a process. We were looking at the changing market, realized that I would say the long-term future, and I think we’ll see more in the entire industry, would be better to partner. So we started opening up, looking for the right place, the right home for our future, and started talking to Vbrick and the rest is history. So we announced on the 19th, officially closed on the 16th, and Ramp is now a Vbrick company.
Steve Vonder Haar: So now Ramp is a unit of Vbrick. To clue people in who are not quite as familiar with the enterprise streaming space as we are, talk about the different capabilities of Vbrick versus Ramp. Vbrick’s more of an overarching enterprise streaming platform, but Ramp is really a specialist, isn’t it?
Neal Stanton: We are. So where Vbrick is known in the world for secure video as an EVP, they work with a lot of large government entities. They work within banking, finance, really across the enterprise, but are known for that secure aspect. Ramp is very specialized, what we call eCDN. So our piece was purely delivery. We’re not an enterprise video platform. It was just delivering that video. So what we’ve done in this acquisition is expand Vbrick’s ability now to work with other third parties where Ramp is working with Kaltura, Microsoft, other EVPs. We’ve opened that up to them and really more towards their ability to want to be open and the ability to partner. So we enhance that and quite frankly accelerate for that tenfold.
Steve Vonder Haar: So historically we had a Vbrick that was a full fledged enterprise streaming platform. It had everything from video content creation and video management all the way to its own solutions for video distribution. Now we bring in Ramp, which has kind of an open approach to video distribution. You would think that Vbrick already had that covered, but what are the unique advantages of bringing the Ramp capabilities under the Vbrick product line?
Neal Stanton: So it’s really more, as you said, about that openness. So Vbrick’s moving towards that or was moving towards an open platform. So they’ve always had their own multicast, their own caching, and their own peer-to-peer. By bringing Ramp in, now because we’ve already had those relationships with Microsoft, Kaltura, and others, it accelerates that piece. It allows us to quite frankly be additive to any solution. And you’ll hear more about that as you talk to Paul Sparta, our CEO, and really through the whole organization because we recognize, Vbrick’s not the only player. Right? We’re not the only participant in town provide enterprise video solutions, but we realize that it’s not about competition, it’s really more about cooperation, more about collaboration. So this really now allows us to be additive to anybody’s solution to help make their solution more effective.
Steve Vonder Haar: So essentially an organization can go and implement a video content creation solution from a wide range of vendors, not just Vbrick, and essentially have the capability to channel that video, distribute that video, over now the combined Vbrick Ramp distribution solution.
Neal Stanton: Absolutely. And I know, Steve, you and I have talked about this in the past. You’re seeing these other companies now making acquisitions or launching their own eCDN capabilities, but tell me the last large enterprise you’ve seen that is using maybe just Microsoft or using just Vbrick or using just Zoom something. It seems to be a mix and I think it’s shortsighted to not recognize the fact that while it’s important to be able to deliver that video efficiently, you really need to be open. You need to allow the company to not have to implement three different eCDNs or if they have another division using something else to have another eCDN on top of that. So you’re right. So what Ramp is able to do now, or Vbrick, excuse me, I’m going to have to get used to that. What Vbrick is able to do via the acquisition, we can cover anybody. Really at the end of the day, it’s the organization we’re concerned with. How do you deliver video? What’s unique to your network?
And I’m going to steal this from you ’cause I use it all the time. You had said to me once before that networks like Snowflakes, no two are alike. We see that everywhere and there is no one ECDN that supports everybody. Well, I mean there is now. Really at the end of the day, we cover every use case, every device, every network, and we can cover any EVP. So it’s really going to make us a very extensible and create, I believe it’s going to create, more options for the end user, any other piece of that, and we’ve talked about this over the past, Ramp has been very heavily focused on security. It’s a major issue for companies right now. So again, with that said, we looked at Vbrick from the Ramp perspective as a perfect place for us because they also value that secure delivery piece.
So it’s a good position to be in and I think you’re going to hear some real exciting things coming up. I don’t want to jump the gun on anything Paul would like to announce, but it’s really going to be exciting.
Steve Vonder Haar: It is exciting times at Vbrick right now, but I think for people to understand where we’re going, it’s important to look at the three legs of the eCDNs tool, multicast, caching, and P2P. So in what type of situation would an organization implement multicast? Let’s talk about the unique advantages of each one of these legs of the eCDNs tool.
Neal Stanton: Sure. So where you see multicast, and I will tell you from the Ramp perspective, our largest customer is using multicast because multicast, for those that aren’t familiar, multicast is a protocol in a network. What it allows you to do is to send video as a single image. So when you think about a large organization, 100,000, even 200,000 employees, if they’re going to run an event and you want to run it efficiently rather than two and a half, three and a half megabits per second per user, if you are end-to-end multicast enabled, you can run that event at two and a half, three and a half megabits for everybody.
You’re talking 99.999% efficiency. Multicast over the years, it’s a little bit of an older technology. There’s a lot of refresh going on. You’re seeing things pop back up now in terms of some of the enhancements that are being made, which is great to see, but most end users look at it as either something they know real well or something they will look at. For those that know it and they understand the power of it, it’s really compelling.
Steve Vonder Haar: So multicast is one option. The next option is a peer-to-peer networking. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using that?
Neal Stanton: So peer-to-peer, and I would say the main advantages is it’s simple. For us to run it, it’s browser based, easy to set up, easy to deploy, and easy to use. There’s a little bit of tweaking on a network around things like MDNS, but it’s something that everybody kind of deals with along the way. So it’s pretty simple for the end user.
Steve Vonder Haar: So sounds great, but what’s the downfall?
Neal Stanton: Well, the downside is you start hitting things like security. At the end of the day, what you’re going to run into with organizations, particularly those that are moving to the zero trust framework, you have to think about the implications of things like lateral movement. You just can’t do it. We’ve actually run into that. We’re working on a large government entity. We were brought in to deliver peer-to-peer and I ran the initial presentation for the organization and of course I put a slot in around zero trust. And once we explained that, they’re actually most likely moving forward with multicast and it’s a smart move for them.
Now, I’m not knocking the security around peer-to-peer because look, it is secure. There’s components of it, as I was talking about in zero trust like lateral movement, that don’t really allow peer-to-peer to be used.
Steve Vonder Haar: Now just like we have different networks, we also have different network administrators who have different tolerances for certain security levels. And for those who are most security conscious, I guess they would look to the third leg of the stool, wouldn’t they, caching.
Neal Stanton: It’s funny because when you think of caching, I use this comment once with one of the organization we work with and I said, “I try to make it sound super sexy, but it really, at the end of the day, it’s a cache.” And the comment from the end user was, “Well I find cache to be sexy.” And for those reasons that you’re actually hitting on. Their thought was one, easily manageable. It does more than just live video. They support VOD as well. And so whatever type of compliance, training videos, anything they’re working internally, even digital signage, it’s very effective. The efficiency is amazing ’cause when we’ve tested as high as 2000 to one per cache, so again, doing the math, you’re over 99% bandwidth savings. And there were courses. And here’s the beauty of where we are. It could be in the cloud, it could be OnPrem. Soon we will able to drop it in wherever you really want it.
So it’s going to be even better because of the things that Vbrick has been working on. We’ve been working on things at Ramp to make it more extendable, but there’s a lot coming up. I don’t want to get too far over the skis as you say, but yeah. I’m really excited where the product’s going. I like the synergies here and what we’re doing.
Steve Vonder Haar: And the unique thing about Vbrick and Ramp combined is essentially you’re bringing all three legs that we’re talking about here under a single product umbrella. That’s a little bit different than we see from some other organizations, isn’t it?
Neal Stanton: It is. So the Ramp value prop that we’ve been running with has been, what we call the universal ECDN, our ability to drop a single license that includes all three. Some of our competitors don’t do that. They’re still focused on their platform, which may be peer-to-peer only, and look, it works for them. I understand there is a market for that, but I believe they’re missing the point and the point being that flexibility. Back to the Snowflake reference. You have to be able to help an end user support their network no matter where it is and I’ll even go with the larger organizations that have done a lot of M&A.
We all know where we’re coming from over the last few years. There hasn’t been a lot of people doing a lot of network rationalization. So if somebody made an acquisition, it probably did not combine the networks or move to any type of homogenization. So the odds of peer-to-peer covering everywhere or working everywhere are pretty slim. Again, with Vbrick Ramp, you don’t have to worry about that. And actually we had a recent win that I thought was fantastic because exactly what we’re talking about. We were telling them that, “Look,” and I always try to say it not to be glib, “But I’m not worried about your network. I’m really not worried about any of that. Ramp will cover everything. We are worried. We want to make sure everything is right, but we know it’s going to work because we have all three options for you. We cannot only offer you all three, but we offer you the most efficient way of distributing video because you can mix and match.”
So with that said, let’s just say we start off with all peer-to-peer and you find out, “Hey, well it’s not working on these sites.” We’ve seen that with some organizations or you might be running a network access control and that’s blocking the peering. Okay. We’ll put a cache or we’ll use multicast if you’re enabled. But the point is, if it’s my competitor, you’re stuck. You’re not doing that.
Steve Vonder Haar: Yeah. In a way we have folks like Microsoft with its acquisition of Peer5, Google with its acquisition of StriveCast, and Zoom with its launch of its Mesh eCDN, all getting into the video networking business. But again, they take kind of a single approach now don’t they? Do you see that as a point of differentiation for Vbrick and Ramp moving forward?
Neal Stanton: Oh, without a doubt. I’ll give a little more credit in the story to Microsoft at this point only because they’re trying to take the Peer5 and open it up to some other platforms as well. But, they’re very single threaded. So if, again, I’m an organization and I implement Microsoft, but I’m also running Kaltura or I’m running another Brightcove or I’m running something else, I’m not looking for three different eCDNs in that solution. There’s enough burden on the network team right now. And I will tell you, if it’s not implemented properly it becomes burden. So the beauty of what we’re doing is it’s one eCDN and I like to use the Lord of the Rings analogy here, it’s the one ring to rule them all.
So at the end of the day, you put in the Ramp Vbrick or Vbrick Ramp, I got to, again, get used to that, the Vbrick Ramp product, you’re covered. It’s one solution. It’s one reporting. It’s everything you want at your fingertips to know how did my event go? What were the results? Well, who was there? Everything is there without having to go to multiple platforms.
Steve Vonder Haar: Really what I’ve heard you talk about before, it’s really a fire and forget type of solution from an IT administrator standpoint, isn’t it, because you implement a single networking solution that can support multicast, caching, and peer-to-peer eCDN capabilities all under a single umbrella, all with the analytics that are centralized as well, and you essentially as an IT administrator now have the power to say yes to a wide range of potential applications on your network. If you’re with a single provider focused on only a single vendor solution, your options are limited. So what does that mean for Vbrick as you’re trying to partner with other vendors on a moving forward basis and you are the Senior Vice President of Alliances. What is the alliance strategy for Vbrick going to look like moving forward?
Neal Stanton: So the plan is a couple things. So obviously I’m learning very quick what we do here in terms of the Vbrick side, but we’re looking at things like embedding video. We can extend what they’re doing beyond just the VOD components or the live. We’re looking at workflows, right? So there’s a lot of other pieces here. We have a couple companies we’re working with that uses us for the recording piece. So we’re able to go to, and I don’t want to call them competitors, and one of the things I should just step back for a second to say that I loved about this integration in talking with Paul Sparta and the team is they want to be collaborative.
I said that earlier, but they really mean it. So we can go to these organizations and say, “Listen. We may be running into each other at accounts, but if you’re working with Vbrick, we’re not going to go into your account. It’s your account, you run it, you manage it. But our content will help you grow and do more.” And obviously from the eCDN perspective. And if you remember a couple years ago we were looking at a roll up. The industry has been doing this over and over and over, but at that point it’s where something kind of resonated with us at Ramp and said, “This makes a lot of sense ’cause if you can build that one license that gives a, not just Vbrick, but other EVPs, the ability to go out there and say, “You know what? I now have all three eCDNs single license. You don’t have to worry about that.” It makes them more efficient, it makes them an easier sell.
So, we want to enable them. We’re doing all the right things here to make sure that our partners, particularly the companies we brought over from Ramp, continue to get the same service and then we’ll extend that out to others as well. So I think you’re going to steal a lot and I’m not just saying that because I run the alliances and it better work, but we really truly believe that collaboration is really what is going to drive Vbrick’s revenue to move forward.
Steve Vonder Haar: And so I guess the message moving forward is that you’re going to try to sustain the partnerships that you forged during your time at Ramp supporting those eCDN implementations and where possible expand into new vendor alliances as well.
Neal Stanton: Yeah. And it’s not just going to be the eCDN side. So it’s how we’re looking at it. Our partners mean a lot to us. Ramp took a long time to build those partnerships up. We earn trust. So at the end of the day, I really truly believe that it’s actually a better home for them as well because not only did it expand the capabilities as you’ll see as we start to rationalize our products, that existing Vbrick platform with our platform and even the eCDNs, we’re going to take the best of each. So you’ll see that all come together and really going to improve the offerings for our partners, but it gives them a little bit of account protection, right? Unless there’s an RFP, which we all know the rules around RFPs, but we’re not going into the accounts.
I’m really excited about the commitment from our company to that to make sure that our partners remain confident and have the trust in us.
Steve Vonder Haar: Well, it’s going to be a great 2023. Excited to be seeing how the Vbrick Ramp combination plays out in the year ahead. Neal Stanton, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate you sharing your insight.
Neal Stanton: No. Thanks for having me, Steve. Look forward to doing this again. They’re always fun.
Steve Vonder Haar: Absolutely. And that’s all the time we have for this edition of Eye on Business Video. Be sure to join us again next time for another interview with a thought leader in the enterprise streaming space. For Wainhouse Research, I’m Steve Vonder Haar. Thanks for your time.
Author Information
Steve Vonder Haar is a Senior Analyst with Wainhouse – a Futurum Group company. His area of expertise and focus is enterprise streaming and virtual events.
