Mobixell update and EVO launch

Mobixell was founded in December of 2000 to focus on mobile multimedia adaptation. Their first product, launched in 2002, was for MMS (Multimedia Messaging) adaptation and was sold through OEMs such as Huawei, Ericsson, NSN and others. It launched a mobile TV platform in 2008, and a mobile video optimization product in 2010. Along the way, Mobixell acquires Adamind in 2007, and 724 Solutions in 2010.


Mobixell has 16% market share of the deployed base of video optimization engines. Nearly 18 months after the launch of the video optimization module in their Seamless Access product suite, Mobixell launches EVO (for Evolved Optimization).


As a follow-up from the 360 degrees review of the video optimization market and in anticipation of the release of my market report, I had a recent chat with Yehuda Elmaliach, CTO and co-founder at Mobixell about their recent announcement, introducing Mobixell EVO.


"We wanted to address the issue of scalability and large deployments in video optimization in a new manner. As traffic grows for Gbps to 10's and 100's of Gbps, we see optimization and particularly;y real-time transcoding as a very CPU intensive activity, which can require a lot of CAPEX. The traditional scaling model, of adding new blades, chassis, sites does not make sense economically if traffic grows according to projections."
Additionally, Yehuda adds "We wanted to move away from pure volume reduction, as a percentage saving of traffic across the line to a more granular approach, focusing on congestion areas and peak hours."


Mobixell EVO is an evolution of Seamless Access video optimization that complements Mobixell capabilities with cloud-based services and benefits. The current Seamless Access product sits on the Gi Interface, after the GGSN and performs traffic management, shaping and video optimization. The video optimization features at that level are real-time transcoding, dynamic bit rate adaptation, offline transcoding and caching. Mobixell EVO proposes to complement or replace this arrangement with a cloud-based implementation that will provide additional computational power and storage in an elastic and cost effective manner for real time transcoding and for a hierarchical caching system.


Yehuda adds: "We have launched this product based on customer feedback and demand. We do not see customers moving their infrastructure to the cloud only for the purpose of optimization, but for those who already have a cloud strategy, it fits nicely. EVO is built on the principles of virtualization, geometric and automatic scalability and self replication to take advantage of the cloud architecture. "


An interesting development for Mobixell. EVO has no commercial deployment yet and is planned to be generally available in Q2 2012 after current ongoing trials and proof of concepts. Mobixell sees this platform being deployed first with carriers private clouds, then maybe using mixed private and public clouds. The idea is a waterfall implementation, where routine optimization is performed at the Gi level, then moves to private cloud or public ones as peak and surges appear on the network. The idea has a certain elegance, particularly for operators that experience congestion in a very peaky, localized manner. In that case a minimum investment can be made on Gi and complemented with cloud services as peaks reach certain thresholds. It will be interesting to see if Mobixell can live up to the promises of EVO, as security, bandwidth, latency and scalability can reduce the benefits of a mixed core / cloud implementation if not correctly addressed.
Mobixell is the second vendor to launch cloud based optimization after Skyfire.