Kasenna teams up with HP, Intel

SUNNYVALE, CA: Kasenna, the IPTV Company, today announced that it has teamed up with HP and Intel to complete a one-million-IPTV-subscriber benchmark test for broadcast television and bandwidth-intensive Video on Demand (VOD) services.

The benchmark test proved that an IPTV infrastructure developed by Kasenna, together with HP and Intel, can support one million subscribers.

The IPTV-infrastructure test-bed, built around Kasenna’s Portal TV product suite, consisting of the LivingRoom middleware platform and MediaBase video server software, utilized industry-standard HP ProLiant servers powered by Intel low-power Dual-Core Xeon processors.

The test was conducted in a simulated access network environment at the HP Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME) Solution Center in Grenoble, France.

As part of the certification process, the test center stress-tested the PortalTV infrastructure using a traffic model that subjected it to peak traffic patterns typical of Friday or Saturday evening consumer viewing.

The test bed, which can be tuned to specific subscriber and traffic scenarios, is designed to allow service providers to test the infrastructure for their own user-generated traffic patterns – both traditional and anticipated traffic – and a variety of stand-alone, centralized, and distributed-content distribution architectures as a means of proving the resiliency and scalability of the IPTV infrastructure before deployment.

The network supports a multi-user configuration in which multiple HP ProLiant DL380 G5 or BL480c servers running LivingRoom middleware software, each supporting up to 120,000 active subscribers, may be tested.

"As an independent Market Analysis Group, MRG recognizes the value of independent, objective IPTV benchmark testing such as that spearheaded by Kasenna, HP and Intel," said Gary Schultz of MRG, a firm providing market analysis of new technologies for the communications industries.

"Although scalability of VOD is crucial to the IPTV industry, objective benchmark testing has been missing. MRG congratulates Kasenna, HP and Intel for removing the veil of mystery about what it takes to scale IPTV to subscriber levels of one million while achieving fast channel change."

“Intel is pleased to extend the breadth of its leading Dual-Core Xeon processors to this industry-first application for service providers,” said Doug Davis, Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel. “HP and Intel together deliver an industry-standard processor technology and platform optimized for IPTV. Intel’s Dual-Core architecture makes possible a smaller-blade form factor and lower power consumption—reducing physical space and cooling requirements in order to help service providers lower their operating costs.”

Kasenna’s LivingRoom IPTV middleware platform provides scalable service delivery using portal-based Web services, while the Kasenna MediaBase video content streaming, distribution, and delivery platform provides scalable on-demand video delivery from disk- and RAM-based servers. Kasenna’s LivingRoom platform is easily customized to quickly add new features, services, and applications – providing service providers unprecedented control and flexibility in offering their own branded services and in delivering a user experience that is customized to the content delivered to the consumers.

“For service providers struggling with IPTV roll-outs due to the poor scalability of their first-generation, pre-compiled application-based middleware and second-generation proprietary client/server middleware, this historic HP-Kasenna-Intel one-million-subscriber test using Kasenna’s third-generation platform based on open, web-services-based Service Oriented Architecture is a harbinger of an IPTV infrastructure that scales gracefully from hundreds to over one million subscribers,” said Kumar Shah, CEO of Kasenna. “Together with HP and Intel, I want to invite carriers and service providers to witness this test and leverage the results of our rigorous and comprehensive testing efforts to deploy a proven, scalable and resilient IPTV infrastructure.”

“As service providers gear up to offer broad-ranging IPTV services, they are increasingly concerned about the scalability of the IT components of their IPTV infrastructure and whether they will support the anticipated ramp-up of subscribers,” said Peggy Dau, Worldwide Director, CME Broadband & Media Solutions, HP. “HP, Kasenna and Intel worked together to define a model to test and prove the scalability of the Kasenna LivingRoom and MediaBase applications on HP ProLiant servers. We believe this benchmark will provide confidence to service providers that are deploying IPTV services.”

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