WowWS

History

Elemental was founded in 2006 by three engineers formerly of the

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way ...

company Pixelworks: Sam Blackman (

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

), Jesse Rosenzweig ( CTO), and Brian Lewis. In July 2012, Elemental products supported the broadcast of the

2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, th ...

on internet devices for media companies including the BBC,

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels— Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territorie ...

Terra Networks Terra is a Spanish Internet multinational company owned by Telefónica, with headquarters in Spain and offices in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and Peru. Part of Telefónica Group (the former Spanish public telephone mon ...

and others. In September 2013, Elemental was named to the Silicon Forest top 25 by ''

The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 18 ...

''. The company ranked #24 among the region's largest technology companies. In October 2013, Elemental provided live 4K HEVC video streaming of the 2013

Osaka Marathon The is an annual marathon road running event for non-elite men and elite and non-elite women over the classic distance of 42.195 kilometres which is held in late October in the city of Osaka, Japan. There is also a "challenge run" with a dis ...

in a workflow designed by K-Opticom, a telecommunications operator in Japan. In April 2017, the company changed its name from Elemental Technologies to AWS Elemental. In August 2017, Sam Blackman, the company's CEO and co-founder, died suddenly from cardiac arrest at the age of 41.

Feared security compromise

In 2015, during security testing conducted as a prelude to a possible acquisition by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

, it was reported that some Elemental servers contained chips from Chinese manufacturing subcontractors that allowed backdoor access. According to a U.S. government investigation, the chips were inserted by a

People’s Liberation Army The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...

unit. These reports were denied by all of the companies involved, no such chips were ever found, and the acquisition proceeded without further incident.

Funding

Elemental received its initial investments in 2007 in the amount of $1.05 million from three

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles ...

funds: the Seattle-based Alliance of Angels, the

Oregon Angel Fund Oregon Venture Fund makes venture investments in the Portland, Oregon area and throughout Oregon and SW Washington. The fund consists of 180 institutional and angel investors, of whom 85% have run or founded a business. The fund evaluates up to ...

, and the Bend Venture Conference. In July 2008, Elemental announced it had closed its first round of

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...

financing, receiving $7.1 million, which included investments from

General Catalyst Partners A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED O ...

of Boston, Massachusetts and Voyager Capital of

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

. In 2009, Elemental formed a partnership with

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with ...

- the

arm of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. Elemental servers were subsequently used in various secure capacities, including by the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...

, the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

, the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...

and the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-ter ...

. In July 2010, Elemental raised an additional $7.5 million in Series B financing. Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on Octobe ...

, joined existing venture funds General Catalyst and Voyager Capital in the financing round. In May 2012, Elemental closed its Series C financing for $13 million from

Norwest Venture Partners Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, ...

. In December 2014, Elemental closed its Series D financing for $14.5 million led by

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 2 ...

and Sky. In September 2015, Elemental was acquired by

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

, for an estimated $350 million.

Products

AWS Media Services

In November 2017, Amazon Web Services announced AWS Media Services, a group of five services that let video providers create scalable video offerings in the cloud. Based on AWS Elemental video solutions, these cloud services let customers build video workflows for both broadcast and streaming content. AWS Media Services include the following individual services: AWS Elemental MediaConvert transcodes file-based video content. AWS Elemental MediaLive encodes live video for televisions or connected devices. AWS Elemental MediaPackage prepares and secures live video streams for delivery to connected devices. AWS Elemental MediaStore delivers video from media-optimized storage. AWS Elemental MediaTailor inserts targeted advertising into streaming video.

Elemental Live

In April 2010, Elemental introduced its enterprise product, Elemental Live, a GPU-accelerated, enterprise-class video processing system that provides content distributors with video and audio encoding for live streaming to

new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

platforms. Elemental Live made its debut at NAB in Las Vegas April 12–15, 2010, with a four-screen demonstration featuring simultaneous real-time encoding of multiple video streams targeted to mobile, tablet, web and HDTV platforms.

Elemental Server

In November 2009, Elemental released the first video server appliance to utilize the graphics processing unit for video on demand (VOD) transcoding. The company claims its performance equals that of seven dual quad-core CPU servers. Other potential benefits include conversion speed, reduced power usage, less physical space, and overall cost, which is reported to be less than half of a CPU server. Elemental Servers reportedly sold for as much as $100,000 per machine, with a

profit margin Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue. \text = = There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin. * Gross Pro ...

of up to 70%.

Elemental Delta

Elemental Delta is a video delivery platform designed to optimize the monetization, management and distribution of multiscreen video across internal and external IP networks. Elemental Delta has been presented at IBC in September 2014 and won the IABM Design and Innovation award for Playout and Delivery Systems.

Elemental Cloud

Elemental Cloud provides transcoding services in a

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

environment using clustered graphics processors.

Elemental Statmux

Elemental Statmux is a software-based statistical multiplexer that optimizes content delivery for pay TV operators by reallocating bits in real time between video encoders and combining the outputs from multiple encoders into a single transport stream.

Elemental Conductor

Elemental Conductor is a scalable management system of two or more Elemental video processing systems.

Badaboom

On October 23, 2008, Elemental released Badaboom, a consumer media converter, in partnership with

NVIDIA Corporation Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

. Badaboom uses Elemental's video engine to transcode video files from several formats, including

MPEG2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon, and Sharp. The four companies formed the HDV Consortium in September 2003. Conceived as an af ...

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around th ...

, and RAW, into the

format for devices such as the

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...

, iPhone, and

Sony PSP The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 2005, ...

. Elemental Technologies announced Badaboom 2.0 is the final version and stopped producing the product. The company supported Badaboom until April, 2013, without further software updates.

Awards

*2017 NAB Best of Show – Recognized for 4K video processing by NewBay Media *2016 EY Entrepreneur of the Year – Sam Blackman was named the winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 award in the Pacific Northwest region in the technology category *2015 TVB Awards – Winner in the Multiplatform Production and Delivery category *2014 IABM Design and Innovation—Best Playout and Delivery System *2013 Cable & Satellite International (CSI) -- Best in Digital Video Processing, Elemental Technologies *2013 ConnectedWorld.TV Awards—Best Delivery Technology, Elemental Technologies *2013 Portland Business Journal 100 Fastest Growing Companies -- #6, Elemental Technologies *2013 Oregon Technology Awards—Technology Growth Company of the Year, Elemental Technologies *2012 Forbes America's 100 Most Promising Companies -- #23, Elemental Technologies *2012 Inc. (magazine) 500, America's Fastest Growing Private Companies -- #52, Elemental Technologies *2011 Forbes America's 100 Most Promising Companies -- #54, Elemental Technologies *2011 Streaming Media Editors' Pick—Elemental Live *2010 TV Technology Mario Award—Elemental Live

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.elementaltechnologies.com/ Software companies based in Oregon Companies based in Portland, Oregon Technology companies established in 2006 American companies established in 2006 2006 establishments in Oregon Amazon (company) 2015 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United Statesbr>Best AWS training institute in Madhapur Hyderabad