Why does a company like VeriSign, that itself operates online payment processing services, build an alliance with a company like Entriq, which has products that do much the same? That’s the first question we asked ourselves when we saw the announcement of a strategic alliance between the two.
The answer seems to be all about the Kontiki peer to peer content delivery system that Verisign bought last year, and it wants to ensure that as many people as possible, from large media conglomerates to small start-ups, can to deliver video online and get it paid for.
Entriq is an indirect subsidiary of Naspers, the African media conglomerate that owns TV stations as well as the Irdeto conditional access business.
Now Entriq is going to bundle the Kontiki client in its Download
Manager, which is used by the Naspers companies to distribute content over the internet. Entriq’s download manager includes customer care, billing, content geographic controls, download controls and support for a wide variety of business models.
The Kontiki P2P client has also been adapted to transfer any content to any PlaysForSure devices which is connected to a PC through a USB port.
It looks like many of the Naspers media properties will now switch to delivery via Kontiki P2P, rather than from bulky servers. AOL, along with the BBC and ITV in the UK are all using the Kontiki P2P client for video download delivery.