Harmonic Inc. is an American technology company that develops and markets video routing, server, and storage products for companies that produce, process, and distribute video content for

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

and the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

History

Harmonic was initially incorporated in California in June 1988 as Harmonic Lightwaves, and reincorporated into Delaware in May 1995. Anthony J. Ley became chief executive in November 1988 after the creation of the company by co-founders Moshe Nazarathy, and Josef Berger. Co-founder Moshe Nazarathy led a research and development center named "Harmonic Data" in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

starting in 1993, funded in part by the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation. Harmonic acquired the DiviCom business of C-Cube Microsystems in 2000 for about $1.7 billion in stock. It acquired the video networking software business of Entone Technologies in 2006 for about $45 million, Rhozet Corporation in 2007, and Scopus Video Networks, Ltd. in 2009. Omneon Video Networks was founded in May 1998, with investors including Advanced Technology Ventures,

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, ...

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...

and

Invesco Invesco Ltd. is an American independent investment management company that is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with additional branch offices in 20 countries. Its common stock is a constituent of the S&P 500 and trades on the New York stock exc ...

. Omneon co-founder Donald M. Craig designed products that won

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Enginee ...

s in 1988 and 1996. On December 29, 2006 Omneon filed for an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

, and tried again several times in 2007 and 2008 after dropping the "Video Networks" from its name, but remained private. On May 6, 2010 Omneon announced it agreed to be acquired by Harmonic for an estimated $274 million. Harmonic sold its line of fiber-optic access products to Aurora Networks in February 2013 for $46 million in cash. On February 29, 2016 Harmonic acquired

Thomson Video Networks Thomson Video Networks (TVN) was a technology broadcast company that used to provide video compression, transcoding and processing solutions for media companies, video service providers, and TV broadcasters. The firm has offices in 16 countries a ...

. In January 2022,

SBTVD Forum The SBTVD Forum is a non-profit organization of private and public companies responsible for the general aspects of Digital TV deployment in Brazil. The organization was founded in 2007 in order to address all technical issues regarding the upco ...

approved a selection of technologies for SBTVD 3.0 which include MPEG-5

LCEVC Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC) is a ISO/ IEC video coding standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) under the project name MPEG-5 Part 2 LCEVC. Concept LCEVC specifies an enhancement layer which, when com ...

V-NOVA V-NOVA is a multinational IP and Technology company headquartered in London, UK. It is best known for innovation in data compression technology for video and images. V-Nova has partnered with large organizations including Sky, Xilinx, Nvidia, Eu ...

& Harmonic’s submission.

Products

Harmonic’s products fall into four principal categories: * video production products, *

video server {{refimprove, date=September 2014 A video server is a computer-based device that is dedicated to delivering video. Video servers are used in a number of applications, and often have additional functions and capabilities that address the needs of p ...

products for channel

playout In broadcasting, channel playout is the generation of the source signal of a radio or television channel produced by a broadcaster, coupled with the transmission of this signal for primary distribution or direct-to-audience distribution via any ...

, *

video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs video filters and where the input and output signals are video files or video streams. Video processing ...

products, and * cable edge products. Video production products are used to support

video editing Video editing is the manipulation and arrangement of video shots. Video editing is used to structure and present all video information, including films and television shows, video advertisements and video essays. Video editing has been dramatical ...

, post-production and finishing. Server systems are used to assemble and play out one or more channel systems. Video processing products are used by media companies, broadcasters, telcos, satellite operators, cable operators, and OTT operators to acquire and use different types and sources of video signals. Cable edge products are used by cable operators to deliver customized broadcast or on-demand and data services to their subscribers. The company supplies

cable television headend A cable television headend is a master facility for receiving television signals for processing and distribution over a cable television system. A headend facility may be staffed or unstaffed and is typically surrounded by some type of security ...

or hub devices that receive digital video or data from the operator network, re-packetizes the video or data into an MPEG transport stream, then digitally modulates the MPEG transport stream onto a downstream RF channel using quadrature amplitude modulation (

QAM Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the name of a family of digital modulation methods and a related family of analog modulation methods widely used in modern telecommunications to transmit information. It conveys two analog message signa ...

Market

Harmonic sells its products to cable, satellite and telco, and broadcast and media companies. In 2012, United States customers included

Cablevision Systems Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American cable television provider with headquarters in New York City. It delivers pay television, Internet access, telephone services, and original television content to approximately 4.9 milli ...

CenturyLink Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink) is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is ...

Charter Communications Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribe ...

Comcast Corporation Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

, Cox Communications,

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...

, EchoStar Holding, TRC Integration,

Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...

, and

Turner Broadcasting Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (alternatively known as Turner Entertainment Networks from 2019 until 2022) was an American television and media conglomerate. Founded by Ted Turner and based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner (lat ...

. Customers outside the United States include

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a s ...

Bell Satellite TV Bell Satellite TV (french: Bell Télé; formerly known as Bell ExpressVu, Dish Network Canada and ExpressVu Dish Network and not to be confused with Bell's IPTV Fibe TV service) is the division of BCE Inc. that provides satellite television ser ...

, Capella Telecommunications,

Globecast Globecast is a service company for the radio, television and media industry, providing solutions for media and content management, aggregation, formatting, processing, transmission and distribution. These contents are feeding various television a ...

Huawei Technologies Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

, Klonex – VCS, Netorium,

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation The SKY Perfect JSAT Group is a Japanese corporate group that claims to be Asia's largest satellite communication and multi-channel pay TV company. It owns the SKY PerfecTV! satellite broadcasting service and the SKY Perfect Well Think content s ...

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

, and

Ziggo Ziggo Holding B.V. () is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing digital cable television, Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers. History The company is the result of the merger between ...

Competitors

Harmonic’s video infrastructure competitors include vertically integrated system suppliers, such as

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorol ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

MediaKind
and, in certain product lines, a number of smaller companies, including

Envivio Envivio was a software-based video processing and delivery company. It was founded in 2000 in San Francisco by Julien Signes, the president and CEO. In 2015, the company was acquired by Ericsson. In 2019, Ericsson sold its television business un ...

, RGB Networks (now

Imagine Communications Imagine Communications is an Irish internet service provider and telecommunications operator, who provide WiMAX, wireless broadband and resell Eircom telecommunications wholesale packages. The company operates in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the ...

), Elemental Technologies and Appear TV and ATEME. In production and playout products, competitors include Harris (now

Grass Valley A grass valley (also vega and valle) is a meadow located within a forested and relatively small drainage basin such as a headwater. Grass valleys are common in North America, where they are created and maintained principally by the work of b ...

, Miranda and

Avid Technology Avid Technology is an American technology and multimedia company based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It specialises in audio and video; specifically, digital non-linear editing (NLE) systems, video edi ...

. In edge devices, competitors include Motorola Mobility (acquired by Google in 2012), Cisco Systems, and

Arris In architecture, an arris is the sharp edge formed by the intersection of two surfaces, such as the corner of a masonry unit; the edge of a timber in timber framing; the junction between two planes of plaster or any intersection of divergent a ...

. In late July 2017, Harmonic completed the acquisition of Thomson Video Networks that used to be one of its leading competitors in Europe and APAC.

References

{{reflist Companies based in San Jose, California Companies established in 1988 Companies listed on the Nasdaq 1988 establishments in California Video equipment manufacturers