Détenue par le fonds d’investissement The Gores Group, la société Harris Broadcast – un nom connu du secteur de la radio-télédiffusion – a été scindée le mois dernier en deux unités : Imagine Communications et GatesAir. La première se concentrera sur la production de logiciels médias et l’innovation pour réseaux IP, tandis que la seconde s’occupera d’équipement de transmission. Communiqué complet du rachat en Anglais :

• Imagine Communications, a portfolio company of The Gores Group and a market share leader of software and networking solutions serving the global media and entertainment markets, today announced the acquisition of Digital Rapids, an award-winning innovator in IP and file-based media processing solutions and software-defined workflow management technologies.

• « Imagine Communications is laser-focused on leading the industry to a future defined by IP, software, the cloud and TV Everywhere, with an architecture vision for delivering and monetizing multiscreen content, » said Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications. « We have made major investments in developing our TV Everywhere portfolio, MediaCentral platform, and MultiService SDN frameworks to deliver service-oriented, software-based architectures for our customers. The addition of Digital Rapids’ advancements in software-based workflow management and transcoding strategically complements our pillars of innovation and rounds out our capabilities. Additionally, their expert team, which is based just miles from our Development Center in Toronto, brings a rich history in pioneering software solutions for high-end media processing applications that strengthens our TV Everywhere business and company. »

• Digital Rapids has succeeded in today’s dynamic media environment, where advanced content production workflows and live and on-demand, multiscreen distribution opportunities require media organizations to efficiently process and manage a rapidly expanding volume of content and an ever-increasing array of media formats and specifications. The company’s agile software framework accelerates workflow adaptation to changing market dynamics and quickly integrates new technologies as they emerge and evolve, providing advanced service velocity by enabling customers to bring new services and applications to market faster and more efficiently. Building on this powerful software foundation, Digital Rapids’ scalable, enterprise-class solutions combine breakthroughs in quality, intelligent automation and exceptional workflow agility to efficiently automate video processing operations and lower costs while expanding output capabilities to capitalize on rapid growth of mobile video consumption and IP-delivered television services.

• This acquisition will also create the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of processing and compression solutions for TV Everywhere. Digital Rapids’ software-based workflow management, transcoding and encoding solutions will integrate with Imagine Communications’ existing mezzanine quality origination encoding, adaptive bit rate (ABR) transcoding technology and content delivery network software to create an end-to-end, TV Everywhere solution for optimized file-based and live video stream distribution across a variety of platforms.

• « Imagine Communications is strategically positioned to transform the media and entertainment industry through innovations in IP, software-defined workflows and virtualization, » said Brick Eksten, President and CEO of Digital Rapids. « Their senior management team understands that flexible, software-defined workflows are essential for media companies to efficiently scale to new opportunities and quickly launch new, differentiated services. We are thrilled to join the Imagine Communications team in empowering customers by not only smoothing their transition from hardware-based infrastructure to software, but by also fueling a next-generation approach to software that puts the customer in control of advances in technology. »

About Imagine Communications – Leveraging more than five decades of innovation, Imagine Communications Corp., is a global leader of software and networking solutions to more than 3,000 media, broadcast, service provider, government and enterprise customers spanning 185 countries. Today, nearly half of the world’s video channels traverse through more than 3 million of our products deployed around the world. With a bold vision and commitment to IP and cloud-based, software-defined networks and workflows, Imagine Communications is delivering billions of moments around the world anywhere, anytime and on any device.