The increased capability of mobile devices is allowing content providers to deliver services to these devices anytime and anywhere. As the deployment of 4G and LTE (News - Alert) continues to move forward globally and cloud computing technology also becomes a viable platform, operators are looking to combine both technologies to offer a reliable content delivery platform. Ericsson has purchased Fabrix Systems, provider of cloud storage, computing and network delivery for video applications, to accelerate cloud video delivery for TV anywhere services and applications as it continues to migrate to the cloud.

With this acquisition, Ericsson (News - Alert) looks to extend its TV platform provision with scale out video cloud storage and computing, including cloud digital video recording (DVR) and video-on-demand (VOD). Additionally it will be able to manage and deliver video efficiently with improved quality of experience while at the same time expanding its video-centric IP network and services portfolio.

Fabrix Systems is going to give Ericsson tools for enabling new services and migration to cloud DVR deployments in all TV platforms including its MediaFirst and Mediaroom.  By taking advantage of advances in clustered storage, grid computing, virtualization and video processing technologies, Ericsson can deploy a wide range of applications to allow users to access content across different devices and platforms without experiencing compatibility issues.

The media value chain is currently undergoing a transformation as a networked society with broadband connectivity, cloud services and mobility is disrupting legacy systems. Consumers no longer want to wait to see their favorite programming, and service providers that are able to deliver immediacy and ease of access with personalized relevance, will garner the largest market share.

 “Our Media Vision 2020 shows that traditional TV is shifting rapidly towards TV Anywhere and Ericsson's leadership in broadcast, video and networks places us in a unique position to enable the most demanding customers to define and deliver the future of TV,” said Per Borgklint, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Unit Support Solutions at Ericsson.

The Fabrix platform offers:

• One hundred percent software and high performance scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) leveraging available processing resources on the same infrastructure to perform distributed computing.
• Fabrix Shared Nothing (SN) architecture reduces the number of servers and improves cost efficiency by enabling running compute on the storage infrastructure resulting in a consolidated storage and processing grid providing robust performance and massive scalability.
• State-of-the-art video striping techniques that deliver efficient use of storage space by distributing files across the entire cluster dynamically load balanced to ensure resiliency and exceptional performance with a maintenance that is virtually hands free. The platform is designed to tolerate disk and machine failure with fast rebuild and automatic self-healing with no data loss, unavailability or corruption.

 “TV service providers, particularly those with IP delivery networks, are accelerating their network architecture investments in video optimization to deliver on the promise of TV Anywhere. Through worldwide deployments of our cloud storage and computing capabilities, we have enabled leading TV service providers to provide consumer services such as DVR through cloud-based deployments, lowering costs and enabling a more unified consumer experience in content on-demand,” said Ram Ben-Yakir, CEO and co-founder of Fabrix Systems.