Afrostream-IBM partnership to help spread African media globally

African and African-American movies and TV shows can now be accessed worldwide, thanks to technology from niche video-streaming service Afrostream and IBM subsidiary Aspera.

The new technology will make streaming faster and clearer.

Afrostream transmits content from major studios and independent companies to viewers in Senegal, Ivory Coast and other countries throughout Europe and Africa. Through Aspera On Demand, Afrostream was able to boost its volume of aggregated content to 1,000 hours a month. Content turnaround time with the technology is cut from three days to 12 hours or less.

“Using Aspera as the preferred means to ingest high-resolution content has significantly accelerated our internal work flow, enabling us to provide content to viewers faster than ever before and to further expand and drive growth in this niche market,” Ludovic Bostral, co-founder and chief technology officer at Afrostream, said.

Bruce Brewer, sales director at Aspera, said the new technology would make downloading and viewing content much easier and more enjoyable.

“For Afrostream and other video-on-demand providers, cloud platforms such as IBM Cloud become attainable and compelling resources for highly scalable, cost-effective media processing workflows and storage once you remove the challenge of getting very large volumes of data onto the platform," Brewer said. "Aspera’s Direct-to-Cloud transport technology provides a robust and secure solution to move data sets directly to, from and across any cloud environment, making it the ideal transfer solution for cloud-based digital workflows."

More information is available online at www.asperasoft.com.