Red Hat collaborates with Summit Tech to power optimized livestream 360 VR event experiences

Like many, the cable, media and entertainment industry is undergoing a period of transformation in the face of increasing cloud-based operations, growing hybrid cloud adoption and rising demand for live streaming and interactive event services. To meet this need, Red Hat is working with Summit Tech, a platform provider for virtual event and live streaming services, to deliver enhanced, cost effective livestream 360 VR event experiences on the trusted foundation of Red Hat OpenShift.

Odience is a remote participation platform that delivers enhanced live streaming experiences and virtual interaction capabilities for events of any size – from conventional event venues to more immersive settings or simulated environments. To further extend the scalability of Odience’s capabilities, Summit Tech collaborated with Red Hat to develop a proof-of-concept to support Odience on Red Hat OpenShift for optimized edge workloads and greater flexibility. 

Odience provides a high-resolution, low latency interactive two-way live streaming solution via unique edge computing enabled video processing deployable within a carrier’s MEC platform. The Odience virtualized video processing service drives 8K+ 360 degree live video streams that can consume up to 80% less bandwidth compared to standard streaming technologies – all powered by Red Hat OpenShift. 

In collaboration with Red Hat, Summit Tech tested performance metrics running Odience on Red Hat OpenShift, including key benchmarks for:

• Container capacity
• Container start-up times
• Glass-to-glass latency 
• Moton to photon latency 

In Summit Tech’s testing for Odience, Red Hat OpenShift ranked among the top edge computing technologies and demonstrated some of the fastest benchmarks during simulated load tests. Red Hat OpenShift delivered consistent compute times and smooth network performance, which is required for ultra low latency video, where buffers are reduced to an absolute minimum in order to eliminate delay.

When it comes to hosting livestream events, minimizing costs and maintaining reliability of stream services are key. Audiences want a reliable, stable connection to experience events without missing a second of the excitement, while service providers and carriers need to keep costs low in order to meet their bottom-line. Therefore, carriers require cost effective infrastructure that can span all edge scenarios to support any event - whether it’s a live concert, sporting event, livestream shopping or a virtual conference.

Many service providers and carriers rely on the hyperscalers to provide the necessary infrastructure to support large-scale event needs, which can be costly. Whether an event lasts for an hour, a day, or longer, the cost of “keeping the meter on” can sometimes outweigh the value of hosting the event at all. 

With Odience powered by Red Hat OpenShift, service providers can choose to use their own infrastructure to meet the necessary scale required of any given event while meeting the low-latency requirements of applications at the network edge. As an open hybrid cloud platform, Red Hat OpenShift is designed to support workloads across the most remote locations – from on-premises datacenters to the public cloud to the remote edge. 

Using Red Hat OpenShift, Summit Tech is able to offer a more cost effective solution that can meet a variety of live streaming requirements. Together, Summit Tech and Red Hat are delivering enhanced streaming services with lower latency and proven performance capabilities to provide the best possible live event experiences for users. 

Learn more about how Red Hat is working with partners to build more agile networks and improve customer experiences for the cable, media and entertainment industries.