IBEAM Broadcasting Corporation

iBEAM Broadcasting Corporation, (NASDAQ: IBEM) offered streaming media distribution, revenue–producing applications and interactive Webcasting services to major entertainment and enterprise customers. iBEAM led the streaming industry from 1998 through 2001. iBEAM's On–Target™ ad insertion technology and Activecast™ interactive Webcasting capabilities created value for companies who used streaming media. By January 2001, iBEAM was delivering 100 million streams per month across its network of high-performance servers located in more than 210 networks around the world, connected by satellite, and augmented with fiber optic cable. At that time, iBEAM's customer list included more than 460 companies, including media and entertainment leaders Disney, Paramount, MTVi, Sony Music Entertainment, IBM/Lotus, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merrill Lynch and LAUNCH.com. iBEAM's technologies were founded in 1998 by Navin Chaddha and Nils Lahr while the business was incubated by CrossPoint Ventures.

As the first global streaming media network in existence, iBEAM was a pioneer and key inventor in dozens of new technologies. Second to none, Akami offered to purchase iBEAM for 2 billion dollars in early 2000 and the board declined the offer. iBEAM had a successful IP on May 23, 2000, offering 11,000,000 shares of common stock at an offering price of $10 per share. However due to the "bubble" bursting in late 2000, most of iBEAM's tier one customers pulled out of the streaming market. During 2000, iBEAM acquired five companies worth a total of 500 million, had offices in Hong Kong, London, New York, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City and Sunnyvale. The company's employee count was approximately 1,400. In mid 2001, Williams Communications purchased iBEAM.

Real Networks

iBEAM wrote the first media reflector technologies by hacking the Real Networks proprietary RTP implementation. Later during one of the largest deals ever made by Real Networks, iBEAM purchased over 10 million licenses with an upfront payment of over 4 million in cash. The technologies written to enable re-broadcasting of video became one of the core components of the G2 server enabling a server to forward a live video feed to another server via unicast or multicast.

Microsoft Windows Media

iBEAM wrote the first multicast distribution services based on the Windows Media technologies. Additionally, Microsoft claimed that by the end of 2000, iBEAM was responsible for streaming over 90% of all windows media on the Internet from the corporate and entertainment markets.

atellite Distribution

iBEAM was the first company in the history of streaming media to broadcast live streaming events via satellite, convert the downlink multicast traffic back into unicast and serve via bi-directional connectivity to end users. iBEAM took a major global role in shaping the technologies surrounding TCP/IP encapsulation and timeslicing of transponders in the satellite industry. Working with Hughes, PanAmSat, AsiaSat and SES, iBEAM led the way in architecting services for networked users based on satellite data delivery.

1 Billion Streams

By the June of 2001, iBEAM's intelligent streaming media network had distributed over one billion streams for the world's largest media companies.

[Category:Streaming [