Magnify.net Selects the Highwinds CDN

Highwinds Network Group, Inc., a multiplatform IP services and content distribution provider, announced a content delivery partnership with video publishing platform developer Magnify.net. Magnify.net has selected the Highwinds CDN to deliver the video assets of its 60,000 customers to online audiences. Magnify.net’s extensive customer roster includes a number of customers currently running on the Highwinds CDN, including New York Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, Zappos.TV, Etsy.TV, Reader’s Digest Taste of Home, BlogHer, and Cookstr, among others. These customers benefit from a comprehensive video solution that integrates Magnify.net’s video management platform and consistent player controls with Highwinds’ reliable and efficient video delivery services.

“Magnify.net’s fast-growing customer base increasingly requires video delivery solutions that can be customized to meet individual publisher needs. Searching for a best-of-breed CDN solution that was built on the latest self-serve technology, we determined that Highwinds had a unique combination of services and capabilities,” said Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net. “In particular, the strength of the CDN’s global points of presence, combined with powerful reporting and analytics, made it the best choice for our fast-growing network.”

The Magnify.net platform powers the multi-source video publishing experience for all content producers and the playback experience for all online viewers regardless of where video originates: professional, web-discovered or user-generated. It offers tools for uploading, reviewing and sharing videos, creating playlists, reporting on usage, and monetizing video content. One consistent video player environment, including easy-to-use controls, together with comprehensive video management features are used for all types of online video through the Magnify.net solution. The platform encodes all video in H.264, and through this new partnership, delivers customers’ videos over the Highwinds CDN, with the high level of quality users expect in today’s Video 2.0 world.

Highwinds enables Magnify.net to provision their own accounts on its CDN, while tailoring all accounts to the delivery needs and requirements of its individual customers. Highwinds is known for providing this unprecedented level of command and control over its CDN, which is enabling Magnify.net to propagate all video from its entire customer base across the Highwinds CDN at its own pace and discretion. With the Highwinds CDN backing all video managed and syndicated through Magnify.net’s platform, Magnify.net’s customers benefit from an all-in-one, truly streamlined approach to creating a high-quality online video community.

“As video moves to center stage, Magnify.net has provided a best-of-breed platform for premium publishers. We’ve monitored their growth, and have watched them continue to offer market-leading solutions around multi-source video aggregation, curation and publishing,” said Steve Miller, president and CEO of Highwinds. “Their customers now have access to the global reach and massive scalability you would expect from a top-tier CDN. And we also bring to the table intuitive self-service controls to effectively manage accounts, robust reporting and analytical tools to gauge video effectiveness, and complete invisibility to Magnify.net’s customers.”

Highwinds Empowers Rich Media Design Firms

Highwinds Network Group, Inc., a multi-platform IP services and content distribution provider, announced that it is gaining considerable traction in the rich media design market, as an increasing number of technical and creative agencies are finding value in reselling Highwinds' content delivery services to their customers. In addition to offering direct access to their leading CDN technologies, Highwinds' gives its channel partners the ability to control their own billing and pricing structures, provision new customer accounts within seconds and private-label Highwinds' StrikeTracker dashboard. For rich media design firms like 9mmedia, i5labs, One Pica and VirtuPoint, selecting Highwinds as their CDN partner was a natural choice because of the business and technological gains.

Mark Snyder, COO of VirtuPoint, a Los Angeles-based rich media development firm has been working with CDNs for nearly a decade. Their client list includes many of the Forbes 100, and includes agencies looking to augment their creative direction with captivating interactive web applications. VirtuPoint has been using the Highwinds CDN for the broadcast of live events, on-demand video and static content distribution to reliably deliver client data. VirtuPoint's footprint includes locations in Europe and Asia, locations that are so geographically dispersed that serving content has been difficult in the past with other CDNs. The company is utilizing the reach of the Highwinds CDN to expand their client base and maximize revenue streams.

"We did a great amount of due diligence before we chose Highwinds as our CDN partner. We were impressed with Highwinds for their technology and massive infrastructure and, equally so, for their competence and longevity as a business," said Snyder. "Highwinds has done a great job of acquiring good talent, and their teams have an obvious passion for what they do - both from a technology perspective and a company-wide commitment to customer service. Our customers' videos stream better, faster and more reliably now, Highwinds has been quick to accommodate our requests, and the next-to-real-time establishing of accounts is unprecedented in the industry."

Jason Wong, CEO of i5labs, a web application development firm in San Francisco, agrees that customer account provisioning and complete content control afforded to them as a Highwinds reseller is second-to-none in the industry. "We can set up a new customer account within 30 seconds, which enables us to increase our sales cycle velocity by closing business faster," said Wong. Moreover, Wong indicated that i5labs is using the Highwinds CDN as a secondary revenue stream for the company. The real-time analytics, substantial bandwidth capacity and StrikeTracker re-branding opportunities that Highwinds offers its channel partners are well-positioning i5labs as an end-to-end provider of rich media development-to-delivery services.