U.S. Satellite Operator Breaks New Ground in the Cloud with Live and On-Demand OTT Offering

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

• Telecommunications

• Sales & Marketing
• Business Operation

• Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
• Remote Asset Management

• Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
• System Integration

The satellite operator was facing a challenge with the increasing number of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, people who have never subscribed to a traditional pay-TV service. The operator wanted to capitalize on this situation and address the more than 100 million payTV households by launching a monthly OTT subscription service that includes live and on-demand content. The operator had an aggressive timeline for its new service launch. The goal was to get the project off the ground within weeks. Video quality was an important consideration, and there needed to be very low latency. Moreover, the operator wanted to be able to offer its OTT service to subscribers at a much lower price point than a full satellite service in the U.S. Given these parameters, Mirantis and Harmonic partnered to deliver a cloud-native media processing solution on OpenStack that met these requirements, offering quick time to market, high video quality and little to no CAPEX.

The customer is one of the largest direct broadcast satellite operators in the United States. The company is a Fortune 500 company with over 10,000 employees. The company is headquartered in the United States. The company wanted to capitalize on the increasing number of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, people who have never subscribed to a traditional pay-TV service, by launching a monthly OTT subscription service that includes live and on-demand content. The company had an aggressive timeline for its new service launch and wanted to offer its OTT service to subscribers at a much lower price point than a full satellite service in the U.S.

The satellite operator chose to deploy a complete end-to-end OTT system on the Mirantis Cloud Platform, which provides an agile infrastructure platform based on OpenStack, Kubernetes and other open cloud technologies, offered through managed services. Harmonic’s cloud-native VOS™ Cloud solution handles the media processing and delivery workflow, allowing the operator to deliver over 250 OTT channels, including high-quality live TV, to its customers on any screen. The operator chose Mirantis Cloud Platform to rapidly deploy new services using a scalable, private cloud based on open source software and commodity servers instead of proprietary, specialized hardware. Mirantis Cloud Platform is available as a managed services offering that provides a public cloud-like experience in your own datacenter, with an option to later transfer operations to your own team, backed by Mirantis training, support and documentation. Mirantis Cloud Platform provided customized infrastructure that was deployed in a 300 node cluster. It provided more than 100 Gbps of egress bandwidth to support hundreds of channels of streaming content.

• In just two months, the satellite operator attracted more than 200,000 subscribers to its OTT service.
• Mirantis and Harmonic’s expertise in cloud infrastructure and OTT deployments enabled a rapid service launch measured in weeks instead of months – which is unprecedented.
• One of the largest OpenStack cloud environments delivering live video anywhere, the OTT service was initially deployed in a 300 node cluster and now spans more than 500 nodes in multiple datacenters.

• Complete end-to-end OTT system delivered with minimal CapEx in less than 2 months
• More than 200,000 subscribers enrolled after only 2 months on the market
• More than 250 channels of high-quality live and on-demand OTT service viewable on any screen