Ustream Launches Mobile Version of Watershed, Streaming Service For Enterprises

Live video startup Ustream has launched the mobile version of Watershed, its broadcasting platform for enterprises. Watershed Mobile will let organizations stream video onto a variety of mobile devices, including the Nokia N95 phones.

Launched in February, Watershed allows organizations to broadcast live video in minutes with their own private-label branding. Watershed Mobile will let organizations disseminate high quality video to a mobile phones via a fast streaming service. The service also includes integrated chat, GPS, and audience polling. The polling feature lets organizations ask their audience what they want to see or what actions they should take in a live broadcast situation.

Ustream has also signed on a few big-name businesses and universities to its Watershed streaming products, including Oracle, Duke, Sun Microsystems, UC Berkeley, and Sling. Watershed is helping create large-scale webcasts for these clients, with Oracle is considering using Watershed to broadcast from their annual worldwide events. Sun Microsystems is using Watershed for official earning calls and other internal webcasts.

The ability for businesses to stream live video onto mobile devices could be very useful, especially when Ustream integrates a variety of mobile devices into the platform. But as we’ve stated earlier, the price for Watershed’s streaming service (mobile use is now integrated into these pricing options), a SaaS cloud computing service with pricing in a pay-as-you-go basis, isn’t cheap. Pricing starts at $1 per viewer hour for 1,000 viewer hours per month or less and scales down to $0.25 per viewer hour for streams that a reach 50,000 viewer hours per month or more. (A viewer hour is one viewer watching a stream for one hour, or 60 viewers watching for one minute, etc.). Ustream has also introduced monthly plans where businesses can pay a flat fee for viewer hours. For example, for 11,000 hours of viewing in a month, companies will pay $879 per month. Through either of these pricing models, mass streaming to thousands of people could be expensive. While a few thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket for big companies like Oracle and Sun Microsystems, smaller businesses may not be able to afford streaming video to a mass-scale, especially in thus economy. Mogulus also offer online video streaming for businesses, but hasn’t gone to the mobile space yet. Ustream has been making a big push into the mobile space and recently rolled out its mobile video broadcasting apps.