Sorenson Media is entering the cloud-based encoding market with the launch today of its new Sorenson Squeeze Server, targeted to enterprise users. The opportunity for cloud-based encoding has heated up recently as the number of end-user devices and encoding requirements has exploded, dramatically increasing encoding complexity for content providers. Concurrent improvements in cloud infrastructure have made non-hosted solutions more attractive.
Sorenson Media's COO Eric Quanstrom explained to me last week that a key differentiator of the Squeeze Server is dedicated server instances, thereby avoiding potential slowdowns associated with shared servers and also offering unlimited scalability. Squeeze Server uses Amazon's web services infrastructure and guarantees 99.9% uptime.
Squeeze Server is also fully integrated with Sorenson 360, the company's online video platform, though as Eric pointed out, Squeeze Server can be used with any OVP and comes with a complete set of APIs for workflow automation. Similar to other cloud encoding options, Squeeze Server includes a list of encoding presets so that users are free from concern about understanding specific encoding parameters. Pricing begins at $499 per month per dedicated server instance and also includes a complementary account for Sorenson 360.