Nexio launches new web television platform that marries web 2.0 and broadcasting

Montreal-based IT services company Nexio Technologies Inc. has started a web TV outfit designed to help companies broadcast their own content online. According to industry observers, the organization might be on to something with this business model. Launched earlier this month, the new subsidiary, called Nexio TV, offers production and technology support for organizations that want to operate their own web-based TV networks. The company provides everything from project management to content creation, marketing and site-traffic optimization. According to Benjamin Masse, Nexio’s VP, digital content, Nexio TV is the manifestation of certain acquisitions the company has made over the past while. Late last year it bought Double V3, which develops web applications for the music industry. Its Adsong program, for instance, lets companies embed music-playing features into their web sites. Masse was Double V3’s president. And just a few weeks ago, Nexio purchased Pecunia, an Internet TV firm already well known for its TVos technology platform, which allows broadcasters to incorporate web 2.0 functionality into broadcasts. Montreal’s Astral Media Inc., Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., and the Cirque du Soleil have used Pecunia’s technology. “It was a step forward in our vision of being able to provide services and products to Fortune 500 companies looking to have online conversations with their customers,” Masse says. He adds that Nexio’s IT expertise goes hand in hand with its new web TV offerings. “The media side is a bit newer, but we know how to deal with servers, the internet, and connectivity on mobile phones.... Nexio TV fits in our competencies.” Nexio TV is targeting a range of potential customers – everything from financial institutions looking to broadcast a senior executive’s town-hall speech to employees located in various parts of the world, to hotels that want to give potential guests a way to peruse the grounds prior to their visits. Nexio TV’s revenues come via up-front fees for web-channel set-up, plus ongoing fees for network connectivity if the customer doesn’t already operate its own network, streaming costs, and costs associated with the hardware and software hosted by Nexio TV, Masse says. “There are also situations with special events where we enter revenue-sharing agreements. There’s no fee, but there’s a traffic or marketing guarantee. That’s the sort of deal we do with existing TV broadcasters.” Industry analysts say Nexio TV is in a nascent industry that seems poised to take off. Michelle Warren, principal analyst at technology consultancy MW Research and Consulting in Toronto, says she suspects more companies will begin offering the sorts of services that Nexio now provides. “It should enable them to perfect the technology and the business model,” she says. “I could see it being put into niche markets... especially retail,” says Tony Olvet, VP of research at IDC Canada Ltd. He explains that retailers are looking for unique technologies to add to their e-commerce platforms, to differentiate themselves. Both analysts suggest Nexio TV would be wise to expand beyond Canada. “I think it’s critical for a company like this to consider international business development,” Olvet says. But it also makes sense to “play in a familiar backyard first,” Warren says, explaining that it’s important for the company to build its reputation vertical by vertical if it aims to prove its worth internationally with various industries – financial, retail, services, et cetera. Nexio TV also plays into a bigger web TV picture, which is changing, Olvet says. While the traditional TV model seems to be struggling these days, web broadcasting is still far from taking over. Earlier web broadcasters such as NeuLion Inc. (a.k.a. JumpTV) and Joost N.V. have made minor inroads, but “people expected they’d make a bigger dent in the market.” People are watching Hulu LLC, the joint NBC-Fox web TV portal, to see if it can sustain the success it seems to have attained early on as well, Olvet says. Perhaps most tellingly, Nexio TV operates in high-definition, with picture quality that is leaps and bounds better than the do-what-you-can technologies of earlier web TV offerings. According to Warren, that coincides with a shift towards visual communication in society at large, putting Nexio TV in the right place at the right time. “There’s a whole generation comfortable with shooting content and putting it online. It’s become more the norm for how we communicate.” (To see a sample of this type of IPTV technology, visit the One Drop Foundation’s web site, and specifically this webcast: http://webcast.pecunia.tv/tvos_onedropconf0209/?projid1241&langen. It’s a recording of Guy Laliberte, One Drop’s founder and head of Cirque du Soleil. The webcast is about his upcoming (Sept. 30) trip into space aboard a Russian spacecraft, where he plans to promote global water preservation.) Stefan Dubowski is a freelance writer in Ottawa. You can reach him via sdubowski@rogers.com.

Nexio launches new web television platform that marries web 2.0 and broadcasting

News | 09/23/2009 5:56 pm EDT

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