Internet acceleration company LiveQoS is announcing LiveONE a Software Defined QoE cloud service that’s specifically designed for delivery challenged Demanding Internet Apps.  We recently had the opportunity to speak to Martin Horne, CEO of LiveQoS, about the development of LiveONE and the underlying tech behind it. A big thanks to Martin for providing us with his insight.

Can you define the problem

Martin: Enterprise applications that transfer very large files (100GB – 10 TB) or trigger huge network flows like with rich desktop virtualization (10Mbps – 100Mbps) are expensive to operate over MPLS or deliver too slowly over the internet. That’s because these apps need a high-quantity of high-quality sustained bandwidth speed in order to deliver acceptable Quality of Experience (QoE). We call these Demanding Internet Apps.

Can you give us some background on LiveQoS

Martin: We are an internet acceleration company based in Ottawa, Canada. Currently we have 18 employees, most of whom are from leading telecom companies like Cisco, Alcatel, Nortel, and Blackberry – Ottawa has historically been the epicenter of telecom in Canada. We specialize in delivery of Demanding Internet apps that require both high quality and high quantity of sustained bandwidth. We sell our technology and service to large OEMs, ISVs, and SaaS providers. Over 50% of all thin clients and 20% of all PCs embed LiveQoS technology this equates too over 50M endpoints a year.

What are the products that you offer

Martin: LiveQoS’s product is LiveONE.  LiveONE consists of a global cloud overlay network that interacts with client side protocol optimizers called LiveTCP (formerly SuperTCP) and LiveUDP, and client side network monitoring called LiveVIEW. These optimizers adapt dynamically based on LiveVIEW’s continuous real time network measurements.

LiveONE is the first SD-QoE cloud service for Demanding Internet apps. With LiveONE these apps see a faster less variable lower latency network. For example, instead of these apps always blindly following the often congested internet route LiveONE can avoid this congestion by relaying these apps over popular public clouds like Softlayer, AWS, Digital Ocean, and Azure.

LiveQoS works with OEMs, ISVs, and SaaS providers to embed LiveONE on their devices, software, or services. LiveONE enabled endpoints automatically determine when it makes performance and economic sense to override the standard internet BGP routing scheme for LiveONE’s faster path.

Do you work with Fortune 500 companies like HP

Martin: Yes we do. LiveQoS’s business model is OEM. In other words, we embed our network acceleration technology in other company’s products. For example, we have customers in the PC, Thin Client, Mobile, Virtualization, SD-WAN, and Cloud markets. LiveQoS’s technology can run on all popular platforms in many technology form factors.

Could you give us an example

Martin: Sure, one of the leading Thin Client providers embeds LiveQoS’s technology on their devices. They use our technology to maximize the user experience for graphic intensive cloud apps like AutoCAD. With these apps, even small amounts of, packet loss, buffer bloat, or jitter, can spoil the user experience.

Are you services complementary to SD-WAN products

Martin: Yes, LiveONE’s SD-QoE capabilities are complementary to SD-WAN products. Think of it this way, LiveONE fixes internet quality so SD-WAN solutions can increase the hit-rate of switching from expensive MPLS to cheaper internet bandwidth.

This is particularly true for Demanding Internet Applications, that require a high quality of high quantity bandwidth. Without LiveONE these apps are just too expensive to operate over MPLS and just too slow to operate over the internet.

Can you improve network performance for AWS

Martin: Yes. We provide both software drivers or virtual appliances that can be deployed on any of the popular cloud providers including AWS.

Do you have metrics on how much you can improve speed

Martin: The amount of network speed improvement depends on many factors. If a network is behaving well, then there’s no speed improvement to be had, and automatically we step out of the way. On the other hand, if packet loss, buffer bloat, or jitter are detected our network optimizers mitigate them in order to improve network performance. Each situation is different, but we generally see speed improvements in the range of 2X-10X, particularly when, the session is over a longer latency (>100ms think x-country, >150ms think global) and during the busy time of day when there’s the most amount of potential network congestion.

How did you come up with the idea for MASV Rush

Martin: MASV Rush was the outcome of looking for a use case that would really showcase LiveONE’s fast Heavy-Data power lift capability. Therefore, we decide to target video producers who need to transfer large raw video files between geo dispersed global partners. For example, a video could be shot on location in Europe, have post production done in North America, with finishing done in Asia. These files can be hundreds of GBs in size and may need several back and forth transfers before the video gets finalized. That’s a huge amount of time critical data transferring around the world.

We also decided to innovate on MASV Rush’s business model by making it contract free and pay-as-you-go. Data is charged at $0.15GB. In fact, MASV Rush just launched on Feb. 22 MASV to many rave reviews. Check it out here at MASV.io and try it for yourself.  All users get their first 50GB of large file transfer for free. It takes less than a minute to setup an account and it’s extremely simple to use. It’s a browser based, zero-setup, no-downloads, web app. And, dare I brag – it’s very fast.

So how does MASV work

Martin: MASV Rush is essentially a web app that only requires a basic sign up. Once registered a user simply enters the recipients email address and the files to transfer, and then they initiate the transfer by clicking on the ‘send’ button. The first 50GB of data transferred is free.

Is MASV primarily targeting businesses or end users

Martin: With MASV Rush, we’re going after direct users because it’s geared mostly toward small post-production companies that don’t care about the technology. They just want something as easy as WeTransfer, but without the 24GB file size limit, and speed wise – as fast as their maximum internet connection speed. We’re having lots of people say MASV Rush is a real gamer-changer and way easier and faster than other solutions.  Literally, in under a minute a user can, register with MASV Rush and send their first large file.

How big is the addressable market

Martin: The Fast File Transfers market is a niche market that does around $50-60M per year.  We believe this market has been inhibited due to the complexity and cost of the current UDP product offerings. When cost but time is not a constraint users use DropBox or WeTransfer to transfer large files. When time but cost is not a constraint users use one of the complex UDP solutions. When both cost and time are a constraint users courier hard drives. MASV Rush is really targeting companies that are forced to courier hard drives. Therefore, we think with this strategy MASV Rush can grow the Fast File Transfer market significantly.