As a direct response to the new pressures faced by businesses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, South African AV technology solutions provider, Stage Audio Works, has announced StreamWorks, South Africa’s first end-to-end live streaming service. StreamWorks, a Stage Audio Works initiative, delivers a combination of high quality hardware, software and infrastructure that enables secure, reliable and predictable internet video delivery across the world.
“COVID-19 has changed the way we work forever,” said SAW’s group CTO, Nathan Ihlenfeldt. “Participation in virtual events and remote meetings via the internet has become the norm for most of us, and even when the world finally starts to open up again, will remain an important part of our everyday lives. However, public streaming platforms and the internet in general has come under increasing pressure, with embarrassing consequences to the host organizations. With vast experience in delivering video reliably to internet users, especially in Africa, we decided to take things a step further and launched StreamWorks with the aim of providing a modern, end-to-end system that adds a layer of reliability and security to live streams and ensures viewers can access content whenever and wherever they need to.”
StreamWorks’ core offering is its web streaming service hosted on state-of-the-art infrastructure with multiple CDN providers delivering content to end users, and multiple origin servers located in geo- and network-divers hosting environments. With POPs on all of the major IXPs globally, the StreamWorks CDN provides fast loading times and high video quality regardless of viewer location. The StreamWorks player can be embedded in any website, offering full viewer engagement and geo analytics for each event. Events may also be simulcast to social media networks like YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Periscope and others.
Additional services include a customisable webinar platform that provides delegate registration, attendance tracking, chat and Q&A, coupled with reliable, low-latency video delivery technology; a customised event landing page with a custom URL slug which can include an embedded video stream player, chat, Q&A and other useful content; and an IP camera restreaming service, enabling customers to embed live feeds from RTSP or ONVIF cameras on their website for viewing across the world. Additionally, StreamWorks offers an SRT Contribution network that allows remote contributors around the world to send high quality, low latency video and audio from their location to the production site over the robust Amazon Web Services network. This is particularly useful for bringing in remote studios with green screens into one virtual production.
“Our new platform has enabled companies and organisations to successfully stream their events, services, training or whatever it is they would like to share with audiences around the world,” says Ihlenfeldt. “We’ve had an amazing response from the corporate world as well as live venues, churches and religious organisations all looking for safe and reliable ways to reach and communicate with their audiences. It’s even provided a new revenue stream for many of our customers, which is excellent news. We’re delighted to have been able to leverage our expertise in reliable video delivery with the development of a new platform that enables our customers to react positively to the pandemic and continue to develop their businesses both locally and worldwide.”
