Standards committees and industry consortiums are working through a number of video standards to support UltraHD video as well as the next-generation of mobile video services, such as HEVC and DASH packaging, according to ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com). 

However, some pain points remain unaddressed by the majority of vendors going in predictable directions; meanwhile, a few trailblazers are working on disruptive innovations, says the research group. Areas such as the inability of TCP delivery to keep up with high throughput demands, the lack of perceptual tools in modern codecs, as well as the inefficiency of storage within CDNs all pose significant additional challenges within the ecosystem.  A number of innovative companies, from startups to more mature businesses, are addressing these issues: bitmovin, beamr, Akamai, Aspera (part of IBM), Vantrix, and Conviva.

"Of the areas we examined, carrier equipment for video delivery, transit replacements for TCP, and real user monitoring (RUM)/application performance monitoring (APM) applied to video have the largest market potential and are expected to be the most pervasive in tomorrow’s video services," says ABO Research Practice Director Sam Rosen.  “Meanwhile, OTT monitoring is expected to remain a niche market. These disruptive innovations will lead to about US$1.5 billion in 2020 revenues across a variety of industries."