StreamShark and Hive Streaming: Delivering the Best Enterprise Video Experience
At StreamShark, we are proud of our long-standing partnership with Hive Streaming, the leading provider of eCDN delivery for enterprise video streaming. Together, we offer a seamless integration and a user-friendly experience for enterprise customers who want to leverage the power of eCDN delivery.
On the back of this great partnership, we’ve got some exciting new updates to share with you!
New Hive VX Pricing Models
StreamShark now integrates and resells Hive’s latest “Hive VX Platform”, which offers a new simplified license scheme that encompasses eCDN and new enhanced VX features. It is based on Full Time Employees (FTE) using the service from unlimited devices. The FTE subscription model is available on annual plans.
Additionally, StreamShark can offer Event based pricing for one off Hive-enabled events. This means you no longer need to subscribe to an annual plan off the bat to get access to the benefits of the Hive platform, and can instead leverage it for initial individual events. This is a great option if you don’t stream regularly which will enable you to discover the full Video Experience platform.
Access To The Latest Features
The biggest and most important update comes through a technical collaboration between Hive and StreamShark to integrate and certify (“Certified by Hive”) the latest releases of the Hive Plugin, and the StreamShark Event player. This grants our users access to these great features:
- Engagement Indicators
Engagement indicators are a set of metrics that help Hive identify the video employee engagement. More specifically Hive collect anonymous information from everyone that participated in the live event regarding the player window position i.e., if it is in the background or the foreground, the volume levels i.e., low, high, or muted, and player window size i.e., full screen or custom size. All these metrics are combined to understand the overall engagement for an event for different data points, including viewers in office vs working from home.
- WebRTC Remote Configuration
This feature allows Hive to enable different configurations for our WebRTC Customers, such as setting peering policies, limit bitrates, enabled/disable site-to-site peering, etc. This is a much sought after functionality by WebRTC Customers as they can customize the solution per their needs.
- JWT Based Authorization
A new and improved way of authorization, moving to a ticketless approach compared to the existing ticket based one. JWT adds the possibility to provide multiple manifests during initialization which provides enhanced flexibility.
- Booster Support
Introduced as part of Agent release 2022.1.0, the Booster is a new service module in Hive Agent. The purpose of Booster is to enable WebRTC as the only tech from Hive for optimization, while implementing the features that can’t normally be supported in the browser plugin and making them available to Hive WebRTC via Booster using secure local REST APIs. For example, access to all network interfaces.
- Regex Support
In certain conditions, the Partner platform has different configurations per viewer or different sources. To support this, we provide a regex attribute that enables the Partner to specify a pattern in the segment/manifest URL that identifies the same stream/segment even when the URL has multiple sources or is different per viewer.
- Encrypted Stream Support
As part of the ongoing integration change, StreamShark required Hive to support an encrypted HLS stream with the manifest containing the key details, i.e., EXT-X-KEY tag in the playlist. The latest Hive plugin supported this configuration.
What are the benefits of using StreamShark and Hive Streaming?
By using our platform and Hive Streaming, you can enjoy the following benefits:
- Fully Automated Integration: Enable Hive Streaming for an event with a single click via a completely automated integration that performs seamlessly without any manual configuration.
- SSO identified viewers: Automatically identify each individual viewer and link their corresponding QoE metrics in Hive via StreamShark’s deep integration with customer Single Sign On (SSO) providers.
- Metrics per ingest: Access QoE metrics for viewers even on failover of primary ingest to backup ingest.
- Real-time Slack integration: Stay informed with QoE reports directly within your Slack notifications, thanks to our seamless API integration with Hive
- Tailored Reports: Review your company’s utilization of Hive as well as key QoE metrics for events via tailored reports generated by StreamShark.
- Lower load on server and network: eCDN delivery reduces the dependency on the server and the network, and distributes the video segments among the viewers, using their idle resources as distribution nodes.
- Higher quality and scalability: eCDN delivery ensures that all viewers can consume high quality streams, regardless of weak network links or remote offices. The eCDN leverages P2P delivery, which scales to tens of thousands of viewers, without compromising the quality or the performance.
How to get started with StreamShark and Hive Streaming?
If you are interested in using our platform and Hive Streaming for your enterprise video streaming needs, you can contact us today and request a demo. We will show you how our platform and Hive Streaming can deliver the best enterprise video experience for your organization.
