shomi uses Elemental Cloud from AWS to power OTT and VoD

Canadian subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service shomi is using Elemental to help reach its goals of rapidly scaling and accelerating growth in the Canadian online video market. shomi reports that Elemental Cloud, used in conjunction with the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon CloudFront, helped the SVOD service launch and surpass subscription targets set for its first year of operation.

A joint venture between Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications, shomi distinguishes itself in the Canadian field by manually curating content collections rather than relying on algorithms to pre-select consumer viewing options. Subscribers access over-the-top (OTT) content through the company’s website and apps, including, most recently, the Xbox One, and through VOD libraries from participating cable providers.

“shomi’s strong brand and unique, highly personalized SVOD offering have pushed us to the forefront of the OTT market. Now, we want to go further,” said Augusto Rosa, Senior Director, Head of Video & Network Infrastructure, shomi. “We’re preparing video assets for viewing nearly 20 percent faster than before and rapidly scaling our offerings and subscriber base, thanks to Elemental and its deepening integration with AWS services. This is critical to meeting the growing demand in the Canadian streaming market.”

Using Elemental compression and packaging solutions integrated with AWS storage and origination services, shomi also has streamlined workflows. Citing a 10-fold increase in cloud-based resource use over the past 12 months, Augusto noted that “we’ve enjoyed Elemental Cloud so much that we’ve moved all of our content to it – and we’ve already moved all our video origin to AWS. Going forward, we plan to use more Elemental and AWS Cloud-enabled features.”