• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 16, 2009

Riding high on strong earnings forecasts, Brightcove on Monday is expected to debut the latest version of its online video platform. Brightcove 4 features multiplatform distribution capabilities, including support for native iPhone video application development, along with expanded live streaming capabilities, and more advanced analytics.

Brightcove is also launching a new Express edition, which is priced starting at a mere $99 per month -- a fifth of what the company's cheapest offering presently costs -- with no annual contract.

"We think this is going to appeal to a broad range of new customers from small businesses to single divisions of larger companies," said Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove.

The latest Brightcove platform features higher-quality default encoding, more formats, and additional renditions. A new Universal Delivery Service allows for delivery of content over various platforms, including the PC, mobile device, connected television or set-top box.

"Our market is really maturing a great deal," said Allaire. "It was clear that allowing multichannel distribution was necessary."

As such, the Brightcove Player and Software Development Kit for the iPhone expands the delivery options available to Web site publishers to include iPhone applications and mobile video Web sites.

The new platform offers access to new ad networks and servers from Google, Yahoo, FreeWheel and OpenX, and support for Video Ad Serving Template, which Brightcove considers to be the new industry standard for publishers to work with multiple ad servers and networks.

It also allows for social sharing to accelerate the flow of video through social networks and services, including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Founded in 2004, Brightcove turned a profit for the first time this year -- while this year and next, Allaire says Brightcove will post 50% better year-on-year revenue.

Granted, "that follows three years of triple-digit growth, but it's significant compared to what was anticipated in this market," Allaire said.

What's driving growth during such a difficult time for media companies? "Work that has nothing to do with media," said Allaire, referring to an exploding video market among non-media companies. "Video is in ascendance as a medium, which is driving a new wave of demand across every industry sector."

As a result, Allaire projected that business from non-media companies would make up 65% of Brightcove's revenue during the fourth quarter of the year.

As the adoption of video platforms proliferates beyond the realm of media and entertainment, Brightcove and Ooyala were recently cited by Forrester Research as the top vendors to beat.

Brightcove -- rumored to be a Google acquisition target -- separated itself from the pack with leading scores in distribution and integration, while Ooyala earned its highest marks in monetization and analytics. Each platform, however, is fully capable of serving all segments of the video market on a global basis, according to Forrester.

Today, 71% of the U.S. online audience watches video online, while Forrester expects the number of streams consumed to more than double by 2013. Driving this growth is an explosion of video content from users, professional studios, and marketers.

Indeed, while the large media and entertainment companies may have been first to integrate video into their Web sites, Forrester sees organizations of all sizes across all industries increasingly adopting video on their sites.

Regarding rumors of a $500 million to $700 million sale to Google, Allaire had no comment.