More France IP Communications Stories

French network giant Alcatel-Lucent has acquired Velocix, an English firm which helps media companies and ISPs to accelerate the delivery of rich content, like videos and video games, over the Internet.

 

Lucent has not disclosed the amount it paid for the acquisition, but the merger will surely introduce the telecom networking giant to the video distribution services market.

 

"Velocix (News - Alert), with demonstrated strength in video and multimedia content delivery technologies, the highly distributed nature of their network architecture, and the skills and expertise of their team made them an ideal fit for Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert)," said Philippe Keryer, President of Alcatel-Lucent's Carrier product group.

 

Velocix is a content delivery network services and technology specialist and its technology for rich video content is critical for media companies, carriers and other enterprises. The British firm has also developed a metro node that can be deployed by ISPs to speed up the delivery of video over their networks or to sell their own CDN services.

 

CDNs optimize digital distribution over the Internet by replicating popular video and rich media content to geographically dispersed networks of delivery servers. This allows user requests for content to be served from these local delivery servers rather than from a single source.

 

"With the acquisition of Velocix, Alcatel-Lucent brings a value proposition to network operators struggling to support their customers' demands for high-performance delivery of rich media content," said Melanie A. Posey, Research Director, Hosting & Telecom Services, IDC (News - Alert).

 

Velocix’s solutions complement Alcatel-Lucent’s existing technology and business initiatives. Velocix was first to market a turn-key solution - Velocix Metro - allows Internet and broadband service providers to deploy their own advanced delivery capabilities to support their digital content initiatives.

 

"The acquisition is a great fit for both businesses; it fully leverages our achievements to date and adds the strategic backing of a major corporation that is well positioned to shape the future of digital content distribution," said John Lee, Chief Executive Officer at Velocix.