Amazon to Buy Video Reformatter Elemental Technologies

Amazon's cloud-computing arm said it has reached a deal to buy Elemental Technologies Inc., a firm that specializes reformatting video content.

Amazon Web Services said the deal will help provide media and entertainment companies with options to scale their video infrastructures as they move more toward internet-based delivery of content. Elemental software helps take live or on-demand video normally for cable, satellite and other over-the-air broadcasts and format it to work on platforms like PCs and smartphones.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The companies said they expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

"The media and entertainment industry is at a unique inflection point, and as a part of Amazon, we will be in an even stronger position to help our customers delight their viewers," said Sam Blackman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Elemental, in a news release.

Elemental will continue to operate its business under its existing brand.

Amazon Web Services has grown over the past decade into a front-runner in the race to build a big business in cloud-computing services. It offers to replace traditional corporate computing—a complex assemblage of hardware and software housed in a company data center—with a la carte services over the Internet.

AWS makes it relatively cheap and easy for anyone to fire up Internet-connected servers and storage gear in Amazon's world-wide network of data centers. Customers save the upfront expense of server hardware, along with labor and maintenance costs. Instead, they pay for access to Amazon's equipment by the hour.

Cloud fans say this leads to faster, more flexible software development at a significant savings, since customers pay only for what they use. Moreover, they can scale computing resources up and down as needed. Detractors say public cloud computing like the kind provided by AWS is too expensive for heavy users and that it is too risky to put valuable corporate data under Amazon's control, and potentially exposed to hackers through the Internet.

Robert McMillan contributed to this article

Write to Nathan Becker at nathan.becker@wsj.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 03, 2015 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)
過去株価チャート
から 3 2024 まで 4 2024