Acquisitions strengthen the position of Verizon in Digital Media Services

With finalization of the EdgeCastand upLynk asset acquisitions, Verizon Digital Media Services is poised to redefine its role in the digital media marketplace.
EdgeCast, a leading content delivery network known for high-performance site acceleration and Web optimization, will be integrated, along with the recently-acquired upLynk assets, into Verizon Digital Media Services.

Benefitting from the strengths of all three companies, Verizon Digital Media Services now offers a one-stop shop that gives customers a robust combination of speed, reliability and video quality– whenever and wherever they want. The necessary scale and performance of Verizon’s global backbone network– combined with a video-optimized platform, EdgeCast’s market-leading CDN capabilities and upLynk’s single adaptive formatting technology – offers Verizon Digital Media Services customers access to powerful video capture and management capabilities as well as global over-the-top delivery abilities for a compelling and high-performance solution that is new to the market.

“The combined assets of EdgeCast, upLynk and Verizon Digital Media Services enable us to offer an unmatched suite of performance-focused video and enterprise acceleration services with simplified workflows,” said Bob Toohey, president of Verizon Digital Media Services. “By leveraging both EdgeCast’s superiority in the CDN marketplace and upLynk’s advanced single adaptive video format process, we can substantially improve the quality of our customers’ online experiences – from end to end.”

With the acquisition of EdgeCast, Verizon Digital Media Services gains a suite of powerful acceleration technologies, a rich intellectual property portfolio and talented professionals focused on Web acceleration and content performance. The company also gains EdgeCast’s 6,000-plus accounts, including media delivery and acceleration services for some of the world’s leading Web brands.

The acquisition of EdgeCast follows Verizon Digital Media Services’ acquisition of upLynk assets that include exclusive technology that simplifies encoding, storage, playback, ad insertion and analytics to enable more agile video workflows. The exclusive technology of upLynk simplifies the complex issues content owners face by streamlining the process of uploading and encoding TV and movies for live, linear and on-demand content.

“The synergies of EdgeCast, upLynk and Verizon Digital Media Services create a new way of giving broadcast customers what they need – a network-based solution built on three distinctive industry leaders with strong commitments to quality, performance and making a difference in the marketplace,” said James Segil, EdgeCast founder and chief marketing officer for Verizon Digital Media Services. “We have the talent and technology to affect real change in the digital media industry.”