Online video platform provider Ooyala unveiled a partnership yesterday with NTT SMARTCONNECT that expands the company into Japan. Under the non-exclusive deal, the two companies will collaborate to create a localized and co-branded version of Ooyala's Backlot platform. Marketing and sales are set to begin in February.

As part of the announcement Ooyala also provided some 2009 updates: contracted customers grew from 30 to 300, self-serve customers grew five-fold, the Ooyala player now delivers hundreds of millions of streams/mo to 50 million unique users/mo, it transcodes 60K hours of video/mo and the company now has 70+ employees.

Ooyala also said that 50% of its customers are marketers, and outside of the traditional media space. The company cited Electronic Arts, for which it powers video on 30 different properties, General Mills and Cerner. The non-media focus parallels what Brightcove recently told me, that over half its business now comes from non-media customers (e.g. business, government and education).

As I wrote recently, despite all the growth in the online video platform space, it's still relatively early days. To be in the top tier as the market matures will require providers to scale their operations, including international expansion and serving customers outside the core media market. It looks like Ooyala understands this as well.

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