Frost & Sullivan Has Two Words: ‘Video Servers’

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.—It’s a good time to be in video servers, according to Frost & Sullivan. The market researcher said the global video and ad insertion server market is on a growth trajectory of hitting $2.33 billion in 2019, up from $1.32 billion last year.

“Major sports events, such as the Sochi Olympics in Russia and the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, are now increasingly recorded in HD and ultra-HD. The consequent shortening of the sales cycles for digital media technology is fuelling the uptake of digital equipment, including video server systems,” F&S said.

Personalized video services are also driving demand for video servers, F&S Digital Media Research Analyst Aravindh Vanchesan said.

“The advent of advanced capabilities such as pausing live TV and catching up TV, networked personal video recorders and interactive advertising is widening this global market scope,”he said.

F&S offered three predictions for the video server market: More vendor consolidation, more vendor acquisition by content providers and digital platforms cutting into TV ad dollars. The third phenomenon may negatively impact video server demand, particularly from broadcasters, F&S said, unless they can be convinced to go to a more regionalized or targeted ad-insertion model.

"As vendors look for opportunities in this intensely competitive space, mergers and acquisitions will gain pace," Vanchesan said. "While the video server market witnessed significant consolidation among vendors over the last five years, the highly fragmented ad cable segment, as well as the telecommunication and broadcast segments, will witness strong M&A activity during the forecast period.”

Companies interviewed for the F&S research included Avid, Anevia, Arris/Motorola, Cisco/Arroyo/NCS, Concurrent Computer, EVS, Edgeware, Espial/Kasenna, Grass Valley, Harmonic, Imagine Communications, Quantel, SeaChange/XOR, UTStarcom and 360 Systems.