Omneon sells Castify business unit to Aspera

After having acquired Castify just two years ago, Omneon is divesting from it, although it will collaborate with Aspera in the development of CDN solutions for broadcast and other markets.

Coinciding with the opening of NAB'09, the new CEO of Omneon, Suresh Vasudevan, has confirmed the sale of the Castify business unit, acquired just two years ago and specialized in technologies for content distribution, to the North American Aspera. The agreement also provides for the collaboration of both companies in the creation of CDN solutions both for the broadcast market and for other platforms. For its part, Omneon will continue to market the ProCast CDN product line, with Aspera assuming engineering development and technological operational responsibility. One of the key aspects of this operation is that Aspera hopes to integrate its FASP transport technology with ProCast and Omneon APIs to create and manage highly efficient file exchange flows between different Omneon systems.

It must be remembered that this technology contributed decisively to the Beijing Olympic Games for the exchange of files over long distances by the producing organization and the different operators around the world. Now, with the spread of file-based work systems, the need to have integrated solutions to produce, store and distribute content from very distant locations is becoming increasingly clear. Castify's know-how combined with the FASP protocol for bandwidth management in any Aspera network could mean great progress in areas such as contribution to television, corporate TV, IP or VoD.