Grows company by 70% following launch of flexible platform with global reach on Google Cloud
Saves the cost of one full-time database engineer with the out-of-the-box functionality of Cloud SQL
Delivers low-latency, high resolution video-streaming to audiences around the world
Proexe built Blue Online on Google Cloud to connect content producers with audiences, allowing customers to tailor their platforms and scale resources as needed
Proexe built Blue Online on Google Cloud to connect content producers with audiences, allowing customers to tailor their platforms and scale resources as needed
Demand for digital content is growing fast. In Eastern Europe, revenues from over-the-top (OTT) video content (delivered to users directly over the internet) is expected to almost double from 2022 to 2028 to reach $5.7 billion, with Poland alone doubling its OTT revenue to $2.2 billion.
Impressed by the rapid growth of this market, software development and consultancy company Proexe noticed that while major content producers were able to launch their own streaming platforms, smaller players lacked the resources to do so, leaving them dependent on large distributors or social platforms to stream their content.
With the launch of Blue Online in 2020, Proexe enabled creators and distributors of digital video content to distribute their content directly to the viewer through their own OTT platforms. Built on Google Cloud, Blue Online is an easy-to-use, flexible platform, compatible with mobile and TV apps for Android, iOS, Samsung Smart TV and LG WebOS, that allows any content producer, regardless of its size or technical competencies, to quickly launch a tailored OTT platform to reach a specific target audience.
A local provider with global reach
Proexe knew from the outset that Blue Online must be cloud native, allowing content producers to launch their OTT platforms without the need to pay for and maintain costly and unreliable on-premise infrastructure. As it searched for a cloud provider, Proexe was impressed by Google Cloud’s complete ecosystem of managed services, including its range of multimedia solutions, as well as its global reach, which would allow content producers from all over the world to launch OTT platforms targeting local audiences. After meeting the Google Cloud team in Warsaw, Proexe made the decision to build Blue Online on Google Cloud.
“The fact that Google Cloud has a significant presence in Poland was a clincher,” explains Maciej Bakalarz, CEO, Proexe. “We were able to visit the team, rather than being passed to another country. As we started to build the platform we received useful support and training to help us to use the platform effectively.”
The fact that Google Cloud has a significant presence in Poland was a clincher. We were able to visit the team, rather than being passed to another country. As we started to build the platform we received useful support and training to help us to use the platform effectively.
Maciej Bakalarz
CEO, Proexe
A flexible architecture for a flexible platform
With Google Cloud, Proexe used Cloud Run to build Blue Online based on a microservices architecture, helping provide the flexibility its customers need. Instead of offering customers a single unified platform that can’t be tailored to their requirements, Blue Online is modular and integrates with customers’ existing systems, allowing them to pick and choose the services they need to target audiences quickly and effectively, such as digital rights management tools, a content delivery network and, most recently, an AI-powered recommendation engine that synchronizes data in Cloud Storage.
Some of these modules are being made available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, allowing customers to quickly access and launch applications for a specific use case. For example, Blue Online will soon be releasing a service on Google Cloud Marketplace to allow companies with video rights to live events, such as concerts and boxing, to quickly build a web application to host those live events and stream them to audiences of millions.
High-performance platforms for a better viewing experience
With Google Cloud data centers across the world, Proexe is able to rely on that global infrastructure to quickly launch its platform in different regions, allowing it to expand its business internationally. This global reach has helped Proexe acquire five major clients in Poland and across the Middle East in the last three years, leading to 10 large projects with a combined budget of more than $5 million, helping to grow the company by 70% over the same period.
Being able to host its workloads on servers that are close to the audience allows Blue Online customers to build reliable, high-performance streaming platforms, with audiences benefiting from a better viewing experience.
“Google Cloud regional data centers bring our platform closer to the user, resulting in lower latency, so when a user clicks on the website, they get a faster response,” explains Bakalarz.
Google Cloud regional data centers bring our platform closer to the user, resulting in lower latency, so when a user clicks on the website, they get a faster response. In terms of the viewing experience, a viewer will be able to stream without delays and enjoy better image quality.
Maciej Bakalarz
CEO, Proexe
“In terms of the viewing experience, a viewer will be able to stream without delays and enjoy better image quality.”
OTT platforms that scale as the audience does
In the past, we would have needed to hire a skilled, dedicated database administrator to manage the database servers and the migration of data, which is a huge cost. With Google Cloud, all of this comes out of the box, significantly reducing our costs.
Maciej Bakalarz
CEO, Proexe
Running on Google Cloud also means that Blue Online customers benefit from the scalability of Google Cloud architecture. Video streaming traffic is not consistent, with traffic for a live event, for example, suddenly surging to a large peak before falling back once the event is over. Catering for these peaks using an on-premise system would require paying for lots of physical servers to run at all times of the day, making it an inefficient and expensive solution. With Compute Engine however, Blue Online is able to use managed instance groups to automatically scale up the number of virtual machines it uses to meet the peaks in demand, before automatically scaling them down when they are no longer required. In this way, customers are able to keep their costs down by only paying for what they need.
Similarly, Proexe is able to manage the demand that peak traffic places on its Cloud SQL database by using database replicas to scale up the use of data without degrading performance. By making read replicas of Cloud SQL instances to offload work from the main database, Proexe effectively increases the power of the database to read data during the peak viewing period. Then once the demand has passed it can stop using read replicas, scaling its usage down again.
The fact that Cloud SQL is a managed service also saves Proexe significant time and resources that it would otherwise have to spend managing the database.
“In the past, we would have needed to hire a skilled, dedicated database administrator to manage the database servers and the migration of data, which is a huge cost,” explains Bakalarz. “With Google Cloud, all of this comes out of the box, significantly reducing our costs.”
Maintaining a functioning system with easy-to-use logging tools
Proexe is making use of other Google Cloud solutions to simplify its development processes too, with Bakalarz explaining that the “coherent Google Cloud ecosystem, its consistent user interface and the usability of the system make it more user friendly” than third-party cloud platforms. With Cloud Logging, for example, Proexe is able to gain a single, clear, and comprehensive view of everything that is happening within its infrastructure, allowing it to fix any issues quickly.
“It is very important to have all your logs well organized, and with Cloud Logging all the logs are in one place, so you can easily understand what’s happening in your system,” Bakalarz explains. “It is easy to build your own metrics to judge whether your system is working as it should and if there are problems you can quickly track the cause and fix them before they escalate.”
It is very important to have all your logs well organized, and with Cloud Logging all the logs are in one place, so you can easily understand what’s happening in your systems. It is easy to build your own metrics to judge whether your system is working as it should and if there are problems you can quickly track the cause and fix them before they escalate.
Maciej Bakalarz
CEO, Proexe
Helping customers improve their own businesses with powerful data insights
This coherent ecosystem extends to Google Cloud services that Proexe is able to pass on to Blue Online customers, such as business-intelligence reports using BigQuery and Looker Studio to offer customers data-driven insights into the success of their OTT platforms.
“In the past, we built reporting systems ourselves,” says Bakalarz. “Now we can use BigQuery and Looker Studio and give customers direct access to the reports, giving them data on everything from marketing campaign insights to predictive modeling to help them optimize the user experience of their platforms.”
With Google Cloud, we have built a flexible, scalable platform to meet the needs of our customers. Now with Google Cloud Marketplace we want to gain more global visibility, so that we can help even more producers and distributors deliver their content to audiences around the world.
Maciej Bakalarz
CEO, Proexe
As Proexe continues to grow the Blue Online platform, it plans to launch more modules on the Google Cloud Marketplace, with a view to expanding the platform’s presence and customer base globally. Proexe is now one of the most active Android TV partners in the world, and continues to implement new advanced implementations into its Android TV set-top boxes, such as disk PVR and nPVR features for recording, integration with Google Assistant and Google Media Actions to help viewers find their favorite shows, and integrations with other value-added services.
“With Google Cloud, we have built a flexible, scalable platform to meet the needs of our customers,” explains Bakalarz. “Now with Google Cloud Marketplace we want to gain more global visibility, so that we can help even more producers and distributors deliver their content to audiences around the world.”
Part of Vectra Capital Group, Proexe is a software development company with more than 100 employees in offices around the world, delivering cutting-edge IT solutions to its clients. Proexe’s core product, Blue Online, is a platform that allows content owners to create their own over-the-top or streaming platforms to stream video content directly to audiences.
Industries: Media and Entertainment, Technology
Location: Poland, Saudi Arabia, Norway
Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery, Cloud Logging, Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, Firebase, Looker, Redis, Kubernetes
