IBM buys cloud video service provider Clearleap
IBM has snapped up another cloud startup to bolster its Bluemix platform.
Big Blue on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Clearleap, providers of enterprise-grade video content management services in the cloud. As usual, financial terms were not disclosed.
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With Clearleap in its pocket, IBM is all but proclaiming its focus on video as part of its overall cloud strategy. The acquisition will allow IBM to translate its enterprise content management technology into a workflow that emphasizes video, which in the end could help Big Blue monetize its cloud platforms and increase revenue.
Based in Duluth, Georgia, Clearleap offers customers multi-screen video processing and video asset management, as well as an open API framework for building video into applications. Clearleap already counts several big media companies as customers, including HBO, The History Channel, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.
Going forward, IBM will be able to wrap Clearleap's features and services into Bluemix as open APIs.
The Clearleap platform also includes subscription and monetization services, as well as data centers from which to host digital video assets. IBM now plans to offer Clearleap's video hosting services through IBM Cloud data centers globally.
In many ways, the Clearleap deal is closely tied to IBM's recent acquisition of hybrid cloud storage vendor CleverSafe.
CleverSafe specializes in object-based storage, which is considered vastly more scalable than traditional file systems. This means is that IBM now has the technology for storing all of those fat video files in the cloud.
The trick for IBM will be stitching the technologies together into a viable strategy to increase revenue.
The deals cap off a busy buying year for IBM. In September, the computing giant bought Meteorix, and just a few weeks before that snapped up software startup StrongLoop in an aim to strengthen its Node.js expertise.
A more substantial purchase came in August, when IBM acquired Merge Healthcare for $1 billion in an effort to give its Watson cognitive computing system the ability to see medical images.
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