SAN MATEO, Calif., — March 8, 2005 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services, today announced that its market-leading Streaming Perspective® service for optimizing audio and video streams over the Web now includes support for Macromedia Flash video. The Streaming Perspective 4.0 provides full support for monitoring streams using Macromedia Flash video, alongside existing support for formats using Microsoft's Windows Media, RealNetworks' RealMedia, Apple's Quicktime and AOL's Nullsoft Video. Keynote Streaming Perspective continues to dominate the streaming performance monitoring industry both in functionality and market share and is the only service to offer support for all the leading streaming formats.
The increasing prevalence of broadband connections combined with improvements in streaming technology have made the Internet a viable and cost-effective way for companies of all types to market their products and services to consumers. As user expectations rise, it is critical for content owners and hosting providers to measure the performance of their streaming content from the end-user perspective. By providing end-to-end measurement and monitoring solutions for all major streaming media formats, Streaming Perspective helps customers ensure that their streams are delivered with consistently high quality and virtually 100 % reliability.
According to a report issued this year by Accustream Research, “streaming media registered yet another strong growth year in 2004, with video streams served up by 80% to 14.2 billion and aggregate tuning hours for Internet music radio 76% higher compared to '03. The increase in residential broadband users, combined with an already media savvy group of high-speed users at work, plus better premium content and more sophisticated branded media players combined to power ‘04 growth. Streaming Media (Internet Radio and video) exhibited strong growth in 2004, with both Internet-only and major offline brands capturing share in this growing on-demand broadcast segment. Video streams are forecast to grow by 48% in 2005 to over 21 billion served.”
“As companies increasingly look to online technologies to tap new markets and save money, streaming video and audio are essential aspects of that integrated strategy. It is important that our customers have a way to quantify the performance of all the streaming formats their customers use,” said Carol Carpenter, director of product management at Keynote. “We have redesigned the user interface from the ground-up, based on extensive customer feedback. That combined with the addition of support for Flash video, which addresses a quickly growing need in the market, makes this the most significant upgrade ever made to the Keynote Streaming Perspective service.”
“Macromedia Flash is the online video format of choice because of the power it gives companies to provide an immersive, seamless experience regardless of connection speed, browser or platform,” said Chris Hock, director of product management, Macromedia. “By adding support for Flash video, Keynote enables our customers to measure and monitor their content delivery with a world-class quality assurance tool.”
“As the first content delivery network to offer Flash Video Streaming Service, VitalStream has played a significant role in growing the marketplace for Flash video,” said Philip N. Kaplan, president and chief operating officer of VitalStream, Inc. “As we continue to lead the market, VitalStream is the first streaming service provider to offer Keynote Streaming Perspective for Flash video to our customers. Keynote's service gives our clients independent third party verification of the reliability of VitalStream's streaming services for Flash.”
Faster, Smarter Interface
As before, the Streaming Perspective Web interface organizes streaming data so users can quickly understand daily or weekly trends, spot common problems with streaming infrastructure, start and stop tests on demand for powerful diagnostic work and drill down to view packet statistics, trace routes and error codes for each individual measurement. Enhancements with this release include more flexible data analysis and customizable real-time alerts via email or pager.
Keynote Streaming Perspective is the industry leading streaming measurement service featuring a real-time Web interface that organizes streaming data so users can quickly understand daily or weekly trends, spot common problems with streaming infrastructure, start and stop tests on demand for powerful diagnostic work and drill down to view packet statistics, trace routes and error codes for each individual measurement.
Keynote is offering a free two-week trial of the new Streaming Perspective service. To learn more about Streaming Perspective and sign up for a free trial, go to http://www.keynote.com/solutions/streaming_perspective.html .
About Keynote
Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services. Over 2,100 corporate IT and marketing departments and 16,000 individual subscribers rely on Keynote's growing range of measurement and monitoring, service level and customer experience management services to improve e-business performance by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction and increasing profitability.
Keynote is viewed as The Internet Performance Authority due to the company's global infrastructure of over 1,600 measurement computers in more than 50 cities worldwide that capture and store on a daily basis over 60 million Internet performance measurements, frequent media citations quoting Keynote's Web performance data and analysis, the company's market-leading Web performance indices for vertical markets and leading customer research that provides critical business insight into online customer experiences, industry trends and competitive Web strategies.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2005 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Editorial Contacts:
Della Lowe, Keynote, (650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com