Brightcove Expands Japanese Business

CAMBRIDGE: Brightcove has announced a host of new customers in Japan, including the country’s largest e-commerce operator, Rakuten, as well as Tokyo Metropolitan Television, which focuses on happenings in the city of Tokyo, and the regional broadcasters Television Osaka and Shizuoka Asahi Television.

ART iT, a portal focused on contemporary art; Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting, a Japanese News Network basic station; and Aniplex, a division of Sony Music Group that produces and distributes anime and music, have also signed up to Brightcove for their online video initiatives. The expansion in the company’s business follows the release of a fully-localized Brightcove platform for Japan. Brightcove established its majority-owned subsidiary, Brightcove KK, in Japan in 2008 with $4.9 million in new investment from Brightcove Inc. and four local strategic partners: Dentsu, J-Stream, transcosmos and cyber communications inc. Its Japanese customer base also includes Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and Sony Music Network Japan, among others.

“We continue to accelerate our rapid global expansion, and our success and broad adoption in Japan is a major driving force to that growth,” said Jeremy Allaire, the chairman and CEO at Brightcove. “We’ve seen strong customer traction in Japan since the launch of Brightcove KK last year, and the recent introduction of our fully-localized online video platform has enabled more leading organizations to take advantage of the dynamic features and functionality that Brightcove offers.”