Play Group has acquired 92.5% of the shares of Redge Technologies – the leading OTT technology provider in Poland. What that means for the Polish company? What was the rationale for the acquisition? 

Play Group is the leading provider of telecommunication services in Europe, which acquired Play and UPC Polska. On the other hand, Redge Technologies has been cooperating with Play since 2007 working on  PLAY NOW, Play’s video service. Delivering a technically excellent product strengthened our position as a reliable partner. The acquisition is a natural stage in the development of our cooperation,

 

On what terms will you cooperate after the acquisition? 

We remain autonomous as a separate organisation. We will continue to develop our products and support our customers in most innovative OTT projects. The strategy, brand, management team, office, sales organisation and operations will remain the same. From our perspective, our partner has now become our protector , someone who invests in our creativity and places trust in our solutions.

 

Is there a synergy effect in the cooperation of Redge Technologies with the Play Group? If so, in what specific fields?

We have become part of the international telco group whose values align with ours. I think it’s a win-win, it’s a benefit for both parties. The synergy with Play gives us a boost in the telecommunications area. We have been developing Redge Media CDN since 2007. Now we have a strong partner allowing us to quickly expand CDN infrastructure to Western Europe.  We get better exposure in the international market because of support  from the international telco group.

 

What are your current endeavors?

This was a very intense and successful first half of the year for Redge Technologies. First and foremost, we managed to extend our contract with TVN Warner Bros. Discovery group. Our SDP platform won a public tender from TVP, the Polish national broadcaster. We expanded our CDN presence into Czechia. Last, but not least we won  a very competitive tender from one of the leading broadcast groups in the MENA region.

 

What is the strategy for the coming years?

Redge Technologies strategy remains the same since 2020 and is based on three pillars. The first is what we are doing now, i.e., implementation and integration for large broadcasters or operators, where it is necessary to build an end-to-end OTT solution.

The second pillar of the strategy is the development of our UX 3.0. vertical solutions dedicated to smaller entities with attractive content. We see the potential of verticals such as sports, news and culture. We are also dynamically developing PPV services and in this area, we have successes supported by experience. In June, we broadcast an MMA tournament that took place in Slovakia.

The third pillar is a video cloud. We are aiming at providing whole video processing and delivery chain in an API-based, self-provisioning model. We strongly believe in the edge computing paradigm. Our CDN solution was engineered with this architecture in mind. We are able to deliver personalised streams, with server-side ad insertion and unique forensic watermarking.

I didn’t mention our separate product line, Redge Guardian, providing carrier-grade, multi-terabit deep packet inspection. It fits into our edge computing strategy, as well as into the telco ecosystem. Thanks to it, we are providing DDoS mitigation service for high-profile government customers. Redge Guardian may play an important role in upcoming 5G SA deployments.

I believe that our edge-based strategy makes us future-proof.

What is your technology outlook for the next 5 years?

I strongly believe in a cloud-edge continuum with dynamic resources management and seamless workload migration between centralised cloud infrastructure and an edge cloud. My dream is to make cloud computing more standard and compatible between vendors. 5G is one of the key growth drivers for edge computing, allowing European telcos to enter the cloud computing market and start competing with big techs. As Europe, we should be technologically sovereign.

Full interview here.