CAMBRIDGE, MA.—Akamai says it has integrated its content delivery network capabilities with Microsoft Azure Media Services and Blob Storage. The collaboration will make it easier and more cost effective for media organizations to combine cloud-based video processing with edge delivery, from content preparation to playback, according to Akamai.

Going forward, Akamai will directly connect its edge network to Azure using a high-speed Azure ExpressRoute connection. This will result in significant efficiencies when storing and delivering content and provide mutual customers with lower, more predictable cost structures between Azure and Akamai's CDN, the companies said.

Akamai will enhance the delivery of live and on-demand streaming workflows through Azure Media Services, Microsoft's cloud video workflow platform for encoding, packaging, DRM and Video AI video metadata indexing. Together, Akamai and Microsoft will work to offer customers higher quality streaming delivery, lower latencies and more choices for their integrated media workflows through mutual partners such as Harmonic, Telestream and more.

As part of the agreement, Akamai will enable select strategic customer solutions to run on Azure and enter into a co-sell relationship with Microsoft, wherein its products will be available in the Azure Marketplace.

Akamai and Microsoft are exhibiting at the 2019 NAB Show in booths SL3324 and SL6717, respectively, April 8th-11th in Las Vegas. 

NEW DELHI—A new partnership between Prime Focus Technologies and Microsoft has come to be in the attempt to strengthen PFT’s Clear hybrid cloud-enable Media ERP suite. Clear, which PFT reports handles up to 1.5 million hours of content, will now be combined with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services to be implemented across global regions covered by Azure.

This deal will begin with the immediate migration of all consolidated data storage to Azure before the migration of core Clear Media ERP to Azure couple with Microsoft’s Cognitive Services. The companies plan to work together on the go-to-market approach, which will seek to help clients migrate to the cloud.

Clear will now be available through Azure’s 42 regions, allowing M&E organizations to manage workflow orchestrations across the entire content supply chain of one system, including processes like acquisition, review and approval, cataloging, QC, mastering, distribution, promos and localization.

DALLAS—Imagine Communications is up in the cloud, as the company has officially announced its playout, encoding and ad insertion systems are now available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This collaboration, which was previewed at the 2015 NAB Show, enables secure, scalable and on-demand access to the cloud via Azure for Imagine’s technology, according to the press release.

Three of Imagine’s products have been Microsoft Azure Certified; this includes the Versio channel playout system, SelenioFlex Live encoder and xG ad insertion system for Multiscreen. With these systems now available in a cloud environment, the companies say users can provision and decommission resources, virtualize operations, use elastic capacity for new launches or peak events, and have access to a geographically dispersed platform with built-in security and reliability.

As part of the Azure Marketplace, Imagine’s software systems are now available in 20 Azure datacenters.