The SRT Alliance has added 33 new members, and video technology provider Kaltura is among them. The open-source group works on one problem: getting video across the internet with low latency. With the new arrivals, it now counts 70 members.
That pace matters to the alliance because it wants SRT to become a standard. SRT stands for Secure Reliable Transport, an open-source protocol for secure and reliable streaming over the public internet. Supporters pitch it as a natural replacement for RTMP. Many members already sell products that support SRT, while others write code for the open-source project to improve the technology stack.
The alliance keeps pushing SRT as an alternative to RTMP and to costly proprietary transmission protocols. Its developer community on GitHub is growing and active, so the protocol gets better almost daily. As a result, SRT keeps turning up in more encoders, media platforms and even video players.
Momentum has built over the past few months. At IBC, the group held its first open SRT user group meeting and its first Partner Governance meeting. Then, at Streaming Media West 2017, members Haivision, Harmonic, Limelight and Brightcove ran an industry panel on open-source SRT. Microsoft Studios joined them, since it uses SRT through Haivision’s Makito X encoders and decoders.
Yaron Reichert, director of product for video infrastructure at Kaltura, said the company’s platform works with any protocol. Even so, Kaltura joined because it sees SRT as the future of video streaming, he explained, with a better viewing experience at a lower cost. In his view, an open protocol that tackles secure, low-latency and reliable delivery gives customers the most flexibility.
Sylvio Jelovcich, vice president of Global Alliances at Haivision, called the interest in SRT and the alliance overwhelming. He pointed out that membership has grown by more than 80 percent since IBC 2017. According to him, there is strength in numbers, and the group is well on its way to making SRT a standard.
The alliance remains open to companies that want to help build the SRT ecosystem for low-latency video workflows.
Haivision and Wowza founded the SRT Alliance. Its mission is to solve the problems of low-latency streaming and change how the world streams video. At the core of that plan is a free, open-source transport protocol, because shared development should speed up innovation. The group aims to get SRT recognized across the industry as a common standard for low-latency internet streaming.
