Media and entertainment companies  can securely and reliably distribute video content over IP using Azure, as Zixi  has developed the ability to deploy Zixi Broadcasters on Azure.

Deploying global workflows for secure live video ingest, transformation and content delivery is a key mission for Zixi, an industry leader for enabling dependable, live broadcast-quality video over any-IP, and award winning architect of the Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP). The company announced, this month, that it has successfully ported its solutions to Microsoft Azure enabling media and entertainment companies as well as enterprises to securely and reliably distribute video content over IP using Azure.

Zixi has developed the ability to deploy Zixi Broadcasters on Azure using ZEN Master, a dynamic control plane that enables users to manage large-scale configurations to orchestrate, analyze, monitor, alert and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network. Users can now easily connect their Azure account to ZEN Master and configure Zixi streams with Zixi Broadcasters which are automatically updated.

SDVP accepts 17 industry protocols

Integration with Azure Blob storage enables the conversion and seamless delivery of streams to Content Delivery Networks (CDN) for playout. These functionalities allow Azure customers, says Zixi, “to take advantage of Zixi’s methods of optimizing and configuring IP-networks for video transport in real-time, providing a fast, secure and reliable contribution methodology for getting video content in and out of Azure.”

Zixi’s technology provides resiliency using a combination of congestion-aware and network-adaptive forward error correction, error recovery, bonding of multiple IP transmission paths, and dynamic feedback to control encoder rate, all at low latencies well under a second. The Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform accepts 17 industry protocols and containers including Zixi, NDI, RIST, SRT, TCP BBR, Multipath TCP and WebRTC among others. Zixi has one of the only platforms and protocols that can provide five and six nines availability utilizing patent pending sequenced hitless and bonded hitless failover over mixed IP networks such as internet, fiber, satellite and cellular.

Deliver video to any device, anywhere

In addition, Azure customers who use Zixi to deliver streams of high-demand live events can leverage Zixi’s NVIDIA based GPU transcoding to deliver video to any device anywhere in the world in a variety of formats. On Azure, the Zixi Broadcaster takes in the live video stream and transcodes it to HEVC/H.265 and H.264. For over-the-top (OTT) video platforms and social media or eSports it can be repackaged into HLS, DASH, and RTMP, backhaul via Zixi protocol, and output using MPEG-TS, RTP and UDP for reintegration into broadcast systems.

“By developing the most advanced technology, Zixi enables content owners and broadcasters to move off of costly satellite contracts or easily start new OTT services” said John Wastcoat, SVP Alliances and Marketing Zixi. “Partnering with Microsoft gives our customers deploying on Azure dramatically increased deployment, flexibility and global reach.”

David Sayed, Senior Director at Microsoft Corp. added, “Zixi brings very complementary and innovative IP video technology to the market, so bringing this to Azure offers our mutual customers choice in delivery and management solutions for digital content processing and distribution.”