Distribution Solutions

Due to technological advancements, there is increasing adoption of streaming solutions and services on a wider platform which helps in better marketing and branding of products. In 2018, streaming platforms had grown to over 200 million monthly active users across the world acoording to some research reports. The streaming market is expected to witness significant growth with the U.S and Canada anticipated to drive the growth of the world's streaming market. This is owing to the presence of large number of established players in video streaming market. In addition to this are well-established infrastructure which allows higher penetration of mobile devices which ultimately provides high speed connectivity and is expected to be a major factor for the growth of the streaming market. Majority of the companies are adopting streaming solutions and services for their marketing and branding activities which ultimately helps in driving the market growth of streaming market.

Kubernetes, originally designed by Google, and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, is seen as being faster and a safer option for streaming services. Kubernetes is an open-source container-orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management. It aims to provide a "platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts". It works with a range of container tools, including Docker. Most streaming service consist of a mesh of different API services all written in node.js as well as the go programming language. Some streaming platforms are also deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and built using EC2 virtual instances, set-up with auto-scaling capabilities to help handle demand using load-balancers to distribute traffic.

Many streaming services use Kubernetes-based platform or infrastructure as a service (PaaS or IaaS) on which Kubernetes is deployed as a platform-providing service. Many streaming services also aim to empower creators and enable a really immersive experience for their consumers. Streaming services adopted microservices and Docker in the early days with containerized microservices running across a fleet of Virtual Machines with container orchestration systems. As the streaming services grow, it becames clear to those vendors that had small teams working on these features that their technical operation were just not as efficient as those who adopted platforms that were supported by bigger communities. This sparked the growth around Kubernetes which was been constantly developed with more features that added velocity and reduced cost, as well well provided the industry with best practices and tools. At the same time, the team wanted to contribute its expertise and influence in the flourishing Kubernetes community. Those services which migrate to Kubernetes find that it fits very nicely as a complement to their existing platform as well as a replacement. Among the reasons why they chose to go with Kubernetes is the improved utilization and introspection capabilities that the technology provides.

Some of the biggest streaming services running on Kubernetes take about 10 million requests per second as an aggregate service and benefit greatly from autoscaling. Before, teams would have to wait for an hour to create a new service and get an operational host to run it in production, but with Kubernetes, they can do that on the order of seconds and minutes. In addition, they reported that with Kubernetes’s bin-packing and multi-tenancy capabilities, CPU utilization have improved on average two- to threefold. Some services also found that many problems with their services were not caused by Kubernetes but were there all along and Kubernetes made them more visible. The streaming market is rapidly over 17% of Compound Annual Growth Rate and expected to reach at approx. USD 82 billion by the end of 2023. The prominent players in the streaming market are - Netflix (U.S.), Adobe Systems Incorporated (U.S.), Ustream (U.S.), Amazon Web Service, Inc. (U.S.), Akamai Technologies (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Apple , Inc. (U.S.), Google (U.S.), Hulu (U.S.), and Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.) among others......Segments of the streaming market are based as the following: By Streaming Type - Live Video Streaming and Non Linear Video Streaming; By Platform - Laptops/Desktops, Tablets/Smartphones, Smart TVs, and Gaming Consoles; By Deployment - Cloud and On-Premise; By Solution -Pay TV, Internet Protocol Television, and Over-The-Top (OTT); By Service - Training, Support, Consulting, and Managed Services; By Revenue Model - Subscription, Rental, Advertisement, and Retail; Lastly By Vertical - Healthcare, Education, Media & Entertainment, IT & Telecommunication, Retail, and Government;

North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the market, whereas Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. The major growth in video streaming market in North America attributes to the technical advancements and increasing use of mobiles and tablets in that region. These are “affordable devices capable of supporting streaming services, and affordable, ideally uncapped, internet data. These are seen in waves across the world were developed regions are amongst the first to get ubiquitous high-speed uncapped fixed data connections at home. At the same time, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, media players like Apple TV, and gaming consoles all reached the point that they were both affordable and advanced enough that they could process video. As soon as both were in place, streaming service usage took off in these regions. In terms of the African market, most service providers agree that greater access to broadband data and the qualitative advancement of internet connections through Fibre To The Business (FTTB) and Fibre To The Home (FTTH) is the first and most obvious answer to the rapid proliferation of streaming services across the African continent more generally. This unfortunately does not yet impact the mass market segments, for whom FTTH is either unaffordable or inaccessible. This market segment remains reliant on mobile broadband data, which is expensive for the streaming services or downloading of content.

As affordable uncapped data options expand across the rest of the African continent, it is expected that usage will grow exponentially. As far industry-specific innovations are concerned, enhanced video compression, to enable more efficient use of mobile data, would be a game-changer. As the larger cloud-based services like Amazon, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure become more accessible and present in the African market, the cost of content storage, content delivery network services and digital content workflows are plummeting, making it more affordable for streaming services to access the market. For example, the use of LIVE2VOD functionality which essentially converts a linear programme just played out by a TV channel into a VOD asset on the fly. These types of programs can be streamed, downloaded or scheduled for download at off-peak times for consumers to enjoy. In addition, greater adoption of HEVC/H265 streaming protocols will decrease the broadband consumption and improve the quality of streaming services, too. Over the next few years, the quality and popularity of African content will continue to increase, allowing ‘Africans to tell the African story’. User-generated content and new forms of content creation will further add to the impetus and growth of streaming using Kubernetes in Africa.