More Screens was founded in 2011 at a critical time in the development of streaming services. A time when smart devices first became usable and when the consumption of media on those devices exploded.
Today, More Screens is an established research and development company specializing in multi-screen video delivery including over the top (OTT), internet protocol television (IPTV) and localized delivery projects. They build outstanding end-to-end, Video-over-IP solutions for their customers that are built in-house, fully customizable, and upgradable.
“We provide the whole solution with the applications and hybrid deployment solutions. And we manage projects end-to-end, so our customers only deal with us,” said More Screens’ CTO, Haris Zukanović.
But delivering high-quality, custom video-delivery solutions is a hardware-intensive job. And it means that More Screens is in constant need of more (and better) streaming infrastructure.
“servers.com has enabled us to deliver hundreds of Gbit/s of stable streaming service at peak times. So, it’s a perfect match for a live streaming service like ours.”
The video delivery landscape has become increasingly competitive over the past decade. “There’s always the challenge of finding new, better ways to deliver video,” shares Haris.
It means that for video delivery platform developers like More Screens, optimization is top of mind across all areas of business – including infrastructure.
“Ten years ago, video-delivery services were selling terabytes at a couple of hundred dollars apiece. Today terabytes have become a big commodity, and clients are asking for pricing that is bound to their subscriber numbers,” furthers Haris.
“Most of the big streaming services like Disney and Sky don’t cost very much for the end-user and the price of the content inside of these platforms is very minor. This is what we must compete with in the market”.
With these video streaming challenges to contend with, More Screens needed an infrastructure partner they could rely on. One that would enable them to remain competitive and deliver exceptional quality products to their customers.
“It’s a joy to work with servers.com. They offer flexible contracts and we’re currently working on an expansion deal.”
Flexibility was an important factor for More Screens when looking for an infrastructure provider. In particular, the flexibility to maintain a truly hybrid infrastructure approach. Using different infrastructure types from different suppliers, allows More Screens to pick and choose the best solutions for their different needs.
Take location, for example. As Haris explains, “depending on the different geographic locations, there might be better providers for certain locations, so we maintain relationships with multiple providers”.
After meeting our streaming specialists, it was clear to Haris and his team that servers.com would be an ideal bare metal hosting partner to add to their hybrid infrastructure mix. They started deploying streaming servers from servers.com for their content delivery network (CDN) traffic, with the flexibility to maintain relationships with different providers where needed.
“It’s a joy to work with servers.com,” said Haris.
“They offer flexible contracts and we’re currently working on an expansion deal. But, of course, this must come in combination with other factors to make a great service”.
With ambitions to grow into new markets, the availability of global data center locations with servers.com was a key consideration.
“We’re already working on future expansions so having global data center locations is extremely important,” said Haris.
“The availability of the hardware, in combination with the delivery capacity of each server with servers.com was also an important factor for us. Providing stable and redundant 20Gbit/s connections per server, servers.com has enabled us to deliver hundreds of Gbit/s of stable streaming service at peak times. So, it’s a perfect match for a live streaming service like ours”.
“When it comes to our CDN, with servers.com we can do everything in one place because the network is so good. servers.com maintains the network and peering connections which makes it easy”.
But one of the biggest considerations was support.
“There has always been good support from the beginning and even direct involvement over chat and email which is something you don’t usually reach easily with other providers. It’s something that has reassured me that we can resolve any problem that arises.
“So far, we’ve had virtually no problems with our servers, but when we did experience an issue, we contacted our account manager and we were able to fix it very quickly. It went excellently – especially when compared to the service we normally get from other providers”.
“I’m confident that servers.com can provide the support we need for our expansion.”
Having seen great success in Europe, More Screens now plans to continue expanding their client portfolio into the U.S and beyond.
“Now we’re talking about expansion to the U.S. to bring content even closer to our U.S. and Canadian clients,” said Haris.
“We have a huge step in front of us. We’ve already established ourselves in Europe and we need to expand internationally.
“Once we get going, we plan to use servers.com as our main provider, starting with our CDN service and moving into VoD, live streaming and catch up soon.
“I’m confident that servers.com can provide the support we need for our expansion”.
Considerable thanks to Haris Zukanović for sharing the More Screens x servers.com story.
