Kaltura Expands Enterprise Capabilities with Newrow Acquisition
Kaltura has been making bold moves in the media and entertainment space over the last couple of years, but its foundation still lies in enterprise video. It strengthened that foundation this week with the acquisition of Newrow, a video conferencing and collaboration platform that will expand the capabilities of Kaltura's Meeting Solution.
"The addition of video conferencing capabilities through the acquisition of Newrow sets Kaltura apart since it shall soon be tightly integrated with our market-leading video asset management and live broadcast/webcast offerings," says Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura co-founder, chairman, and CtO. "We are breaking down the technology siloes of meeting experiences—no longer will organizations need to deal with multiple vendors and platforms for their VOD, live broadcast/webcast, and real-time conferencing needs. Kaltura's off-the-shelf SaaS products and platform-as-a-service APIs will offer a harmonized video experience that combines all video delivery forms."
Founded in 2016, Newrow boasts an impressive customer roster, including J.P. Morgan, HP, Walmart, Yale University, and Microsoft's TEALS Program, according to the company's website. Yekutiel says Newrow brings a long list of capabilities and features to Kaltura's WebRTC-based Meeting Solution.
"Newrow's video conferencing capabilities include advanced collaborative features such as a group white board, synchronized video viewing capabilities, real-time quizzes and polls, downloadable meeting notes, breakout rooms, and more," he says. "While most other video conferencing platforms are ideally suited for simple video calls, our platform is ideally suited for more robust multi-participant collaboration, learning, and training use cases such as 'virtual classrooms'."
A recent Kaltura report, "Video and Learning at Work," found that though the number of employees who receive training at work via video has skyrocketed, more and more employees are skimming through videos or not watching them to completion. The more interactive enterprise videos are, the better engagement they are likely to get, and features like synchronized viewing, real-time quizzes and polls, and collaboration increase viewers' investment in the content. And while Newrow's focus is on video conferencing rather than training, it bolsters Kaltura's ability to provide such interactivity and collaboration across the board.
At least one analyst is bullish on the acquisition. "The massive video market continues to grow at a staggering rate, as video infiltrates the modern workplace specifically, and our lives, in general," said Melissa Webster, program vice president, content & digital media technologies at IDC, in a press release issued by Kaltura. "Kaltura has uniquely positioned itself to address the continuum of real-time, live and VOD video needs. With the Newrow acquisition, Kaltura is bringing video-conferencing technology in-house, to further capitalize on the huge addressable market for Meeting Solution."
Terms of the deal were not announced. Kaltura broke the news at its annual Kaltura Connect conference in New Orleans, which is being livestreamed and wraps up today.
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