Sometimes it feels that the likes of Brightcove and Ooyala, and their myriad competitors, are something of a hammer to crack a nut in the world of enterprise video platforms. To small and medium sized firms these players can appear pretty expensive and complex in their pricing, so smaller businesses often grudgingly revert to cheap or free consumer platforms like YouTube where the the constraints don’t suit enterprises. It’s a little like the days when online publishing was ruled by CMS systems like Interwoven, before platforms like Typepad and WordPress came along. So a new video platform launches today with the aim of bringing a simpler, all-you-can-eat pricing and service package which could well attract a lot of firms.
The 23Video startup has come up with it’s own technology platform to allow companies to create a full, out-of-the-box video site, mapped to your own domain, with a branded videoplayer for $675 a month, which includes 1 Terabyte of traffic (equivalent to an average of 160,000 videos a month). Extra traffic is $250 per TB. While Ooyala offers a $500/month package, you need to contact their sales people. And the same sales process happens over at Brightcove, where your $99 / mo will get you just 50 Videos and 40 GB of bandwidth. With 23Video you can get up and running with a credit card.