Though I've been predicting a wave of consolidation among broadband vendors for a while, deals in the space have only been sporadic. I think that's been due to investors continuing to fund independent companies and a sufficient amount of business to go around for most everyone.

One deal that did close in the last few months was Entriq's acquisition of DayPort. I recently had a briefing with Guy Tennant, Entriq's COO and Cory Factor, DayPort's former CEO and now CTO of the combined entity to understand their joint strategy and a recently-expanded deal with Inergize Digital Media.

I've been familiar with Entriq for a while as it was primarily focused on enabling media companies to support paid business models. It specialized in things like rights management, DRM, security, business rules and the like. Yet as advertising as emerged as the business model of choice for many, Entriq has been on a bit of a roller-coaster; there has been some senior management turnover and also I've heard of layoffs.

By acquiring DayPort, which supports advertising, Entriq expands its capabilities, allowing it to serve customers regardless of business model choice. This would also include hybrid pay/ad-supported models, which I continue to hear more and more about. The combined company is focusing on verticals like broadcasting (where DayPort always had a presence), independent producers and long-form content, particularly sports. Syndication is another key focus of the combined companies, mirroring the trend that I've written about in the past.

The recently-expanded deal with Inergize builds on a prior relationship DayPort had with the company. Inergize itself provides online solutions to broadcasters and Entriq has now integrated its combined capabilities more deeply with Inergize to serve the market. The two companies are also trying to deeply tie in to existing broadcast work-flow and production operations. One joint customer Guy and Cory cited was Newport Television, which recently acquired the Clear Channel TV stations which as deployed the Inergize/Entriq products.

Entriq-DayPort is competing in the very crowded broadband video content management/publishing space, which I've described previously. Yet by combining, the two companies have certainly strengthened their hand. As the market continues to evolve, they'll be fighting for their share.