Hosted service measures quality of online video from the end-user’s perspective, giving service providers unprecedented insight and enables improved consumer satisfaction

Paris, June 1, 2011 — Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced AppGlide Video Analytics, a new managed service to help broadband service providers measure the quality of experience (QoE) for both free and paid online video from an end-user viewer’s perspective.

Developed and commercialized by Alcatel-Lucent’s Ventures organization, which is part of Bell Labs, it arms service providers with the industry’s most comprehensive set of cross-correlated video analytics. AppGlide tools give unprecedented insight into quality, trends and issues. It enables telcos, cable companies and other service providers to quickly take action to ensure consumer satisfaction, reduce subscriber turnover and increase revenues.

The new service, available for trial now, is expected to help broadband service providers improve the customer experience.

In addition to identifying and effectively addressing content delivery-quality issues, AppGlide Video Analytics delivers metrics that give service providers a better understanding of viewing trends and overall network performance. The cloud-based solution combines data from video player plug-ins, QoE agents, content-delivery network devices (CDNs) and routers to deliver a truly holistic view of quality of experience for subscribers. In addition, it provides insights into viewing trends, content usage, CDN and network performance. It shows the volume and quality of video being delivered; gives visibility into viewer behaviors (what is being watched, how long, why viewers stopped watching etc.); and helps service providers monitor, and isolate CDN performance.

Significantly, AppGlide is the only commercially available solution that provides cross-correlation between these disparate data sources, allowing for the greatest possible insight and intelligence. This visibility enables service providers to offer the most popular content and fine-tune their delivery strategy to retain current customers, attract new customers and generate additional advertising and content-delivery revenue.

Video explosion expected to challenge quality and subscriber quality expectations

AppGlide Video Analytics enables service providers to effectively cope with the explosive growth of online video content moving through their networks. In March 2011 alone, more than 174 million people in the United States watched an average of 14.8 hours of online video content, according to recent data from comScore Video Metrix.

Studies cite poor quality-of-experience as a primary driver of broadband subscriber churn. With video, the situation is especially challenging for service providers, as subscribers are accustomed to broadcast-quality HD video and myriad variables can affect the quality of online video, many of which are beyond the service provider’s direct control.

Quality problems can originate at an off-network CDN service, the original content provider or content aggregator.  The service provider’s network then passes this poor-quality content onto its customers, who often blame the service provider for the poor quality. By correlating actual subscribers’ viewing experiences and preferences with network conditions, AppGlide Video Analytics provides insight into the potential sources of the problem. Service providers can then take the necessary corrective action, which may include installing an on-net CDN in their own network. These steps will ultimately allow the service provider to provide a better customer experience for on-line video-delivery, from start to finish.

“Online video is growing at a fast clip, and service providers are establishing more of a presence in the digital content ecosystem. To stay ahead of the pack, service providers must deliver quality video experiences for their subscribers and leverage their infrastructure to obtain insight into ways to increase revenue and further monetize their networks,” said Melanie Posey, IDC, Research Vice President, Hosting & Managed Network Services. “To this end, analytics is a key ingredient in the online video business. The cross-correlation capabilities of Alcatel-Lucent’s AppGlide technology offer service providers a unique, metrics-based view into end-user quality of experience, viewer engagement and network performance. Armed with this data, service providers can make better decisions about all aspects of their online video-delivery businesses.”

“Having access to the individual data sources is meaningful but—according to service providers we’ve spoken with—the cross-correlation of this information is powerful and unique to AppGlide,” said Mark Peterson, general manager of the Alcatel-Lucent AppGlide venture. “For example, being able to see that a viewer stopped watching a video after only a few minutes, and this coincided with poor quality-of-experience will enable the provider to take very specific remedial steps.”

Additional details on AppGlide Video Analytics can be found here: www.alcatel-lucent.com/appglide.

Alcatel-Lucent Ventures

Alcatel-Lucent Ventures is a strategic investment group inside of Bell Labs focused on the communications industry.  The team’s investment strategy has three key aspects, incubation and commercialization of internal ventures, strategic venture capital investment and joint ventures. This strategic focus enables the team to tap into cutting edge research projects, invest in entrepreneurial start-ups and collaborate with innovators to commercialize ventures in line with operator and enterprise needs. For more information, go to http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/ventures.