ATEME has won a first Middle East customer for its TITAN platform, in a deployment by content aggregator Intigral for both IPTV and OTT services in Saudi Arabia. Intigral chose ATEME's TITAN carrier grade transcoding solution because of its support for both file based and adaptive streaming video, and ability to deliver video content at the highest possible quality to multiple screens. Intigral, a joint venture between Saudi Telecom Company and All Asia Networks, is a one stop shop meeting all the content delivery needs of operators in the Middle East.

Intigral first deployed ATEME's file transcoding software early in 2012, for delivering VOD to STC's IPTV customers in Saudi Arabia, but has now replaced that with TITAN to support OTT streaming as well. The high performance and excellent support from ATEME for the offline VOD transcoding made it clear that TITAN was the right choice for expanding into OTT streaming, according to Intigral's General Manager for IPTV Operations and Technology Tony Saab. "It was a very good experience and ATEME's support was perfect," said Saab. "We were encouraged to upgrade our system with the TITAN."

Intigral is currently aggregating content at its operations centre in Dubai and then distributing it to STC over a 155 Mbps fiber link. This service will include IPTV, VOD and OTT, so this will be one of the first cases where all three delivery technologies are integrated via a single transcoding platform. Intigral currently has 20 TITAN nodes and plans to install more as the service expands, according to Saab. Currently the platform serves 35,000 STC IPTV customers, but Intigral is aiming to have 70,000 by the end of 2012, and 200,000 to 300,000 by 2015. Intigral is planning to be an aggregator of content serving the wider Middle East region, as well as expanding in Saudi Arabia via OTT.

Apart from its support for both VOD and live streaming, Intigral selected TITAN for its flexibility and ability to meet all transcoding needs at different formats and bit rates, all with optimal video quality. Other important factors, particularly relevant for Intigral, were the ruggedized design ensuring high reliability in the field, and ability to manage Arabic subtitles for content in other languages such as English.