The Akamai announcement was interesting as TV2U put out the large press release but Akamai did not put out any press release on the website about this tie-up that one can find.
From the side of Akamai the LOI may also, in addition to the PVOC with TV2U Analytics, may represent an intended reseller agreement which in the I.T. industry is a fairly common practice, and the Akamai website has a large partner signup programme into a community model which is non-exclusive and which Akamai encourage for industry collaboration.
Akamai were at IBC2015 post the tie-up but did not promote the announced partnership and instead promoted their own core products and capability around OTT services. In practice TV2U will probably have to drive this relationship beyond its analytics capabilities to widen the commercialization opportunities, but they now have in place the first foundation stone to do that.
The PVOC opportunity needs to commercialise to embed the relationship and given the PVOC is claimed to having went live in March, then surely that would have been an announcement itself? TV2U and Akamai in an airline VOD and Voice delivery solution would be a good signal to the market so I wonder if it happened or if the PVOC occurred in another way, with or without TV2U analytics?
At the point of rollout the announced LOI which legally is tissue paper, would surely have become a binding MOU and then a binding HOA to make legal sense? Maybe it has not in fact commercialised yet and I am unsure myself where this has ended up despite DMOR.
Akamai are large CDN and internet broadcasters in their own right and are a heavyweight who could bring TV2U in on a significant partner deal. For instance Akamai have entered into a major partnership with Telecom Italia in Italy for large scale B2B services to business and broadcasters in that region, including introducing OTT services to devices. This is an example where Akamai could potentially lead TV2U into an opportunity and truly partner with TV2U in a region.
Akamai also have the ability to sell its own OTT solution so it remains to be seen how this partnership plays out in terms of actual deals and JV's signed and executed. It may be where only parts of TV2U such as analytics forms the heart of the engagement in practice and that is fine as revenues from niche technologies like analytics can be substantial in their own right.
These form of collaborative signups are important in principle but in my investor algorithms I tend not to place any future income projections against them until I see the first true engagement with a binding HOA. This is because in all my years in the I.T. industry these sort of agreements may or may not lead to material outcomes unless one party drives the relationship with some energy.
I believe TV2U use some Akamai products in their system architecture.
TV2 Price at posting:
3.8¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
