I spoke to Roxanne Austin this afternoon, whom Move Networks announced as its new president/CEO earlier today. Roxanne is a former president/COO of DirecTV, partner at Deloitte & Touche, and current board member of Ericsson, Target, Abbott Laboratories and Teledyne. Since 2004 she's been running her own investment and consulting firm Austin Investment Advisors. Move's president/CEO slot has been vacant since the spring when John Edwards was shifted to Executive Chairman.

Roxanne believes Move's distinct competitive advantage is that it is the only provider of end-to-end solutions for high-quality live, streaming and VOD video delivery. Roxanne sees the timing as being right for Move because the industry has evolved to an understanding that broadband video must have both paid and advertising-based models. In addition, it must be able to offer users traditional linear experiences as well as VOD, all in HD.

My recent post on Move's repositioning detailed the company's new focus on supporting video service providers (e.g. cable, satellite, telco, ISPs, etc.), however Roxanne equally weights content providers (its traditional customer base). As Roxanne put it, "we want to follow the rights." In other words, whoever has the ability to distribute premium video content - either the creator or the authorized distributor - is in Move's sights.

Roxanne wants to see Move's adaptive bit rate streaming technology remain best-of-breed, even as new competition from Microsoft and Adobe heats up. But I think she correctly emphasizes that the company's total solution - which now includes Inuk's "virtual set-top box" software - is how it will distinguish itself.

As all industry participants feel the pinch of the recession and the need to demonstrate viable broadband business models, better video quality alone is not sufficient to succeed. Move is betting that by supporting traditional linear, paid models, along with new VOD (and sometimes ad-only)-based models, it will be the technology partner of choice.

There are a lot of moving pieces here, but Roxanne's industry relationships and know-how surely enhance Move's odds of eventual success.

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