Highwinds Implements Channel Partner Program

by Gavin O'Malley, Aug 26, 2008, 8:00 AM

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Continuing its efforts to establish a thriving reseller market for rich media, content distribution network Highwinds Network Group today is expected to announce new partnerships with four firms, including VirtuPoint, i5labs, One Pica and 9mmedia.

Highwinds operates a content delivery infrastructure dubbed RollingThunder, which allows clients to quickly access high-bandwidth content such as animation, streaming audio and video. More recently, Highwinds has branched out into the rich media design market, as an increasing number of marketing agencies have taken part in the reselling of Highwinds' content delivery services to their own customers.

In addition to offering direct access to their CDN technologies, Highwinds' lets its channel partners control their own billing and pricing structures, and provision new customer accounts quickly. "We started to see some trends, which we thought would support a resellers market," said Mark Hayes, vice president of marketing and business development for Highwinds. "The common thread we saw among rich media design companies was their ability to call the shots when it comes to their own customers."

To support its growth in this around, Highwinds in March closed a round of financing worth $55 million, which was led by General Catalyst Partners and Alta Communications. Still, Hayes claims that Highwinds is already profitable, which is all the more surprising considering the modest size and budgets of its reseller partners.

"We have struck big deals, like Technicolor, but many of these resellers are somewhat small," Hayes said.

In July, Highwinds and Technicolor, the services division of Thomson, signed a major partnership agreement under which Highwinds' RollingThunder content delivery network is providing content delivery, real-time analytics and advanced capabilities for Technicolor's digital content distribution. "Many of these deals might be worth $5,000 or $10,000 a month, but they add up," Hayes said.

Jason Wong, CEO of i5labs, said the Web application development firm is using the Highwinds CDN as a secondary revenue stream for the company. "We are private-labeling the CDN and StrikeTracker as 'i5labs CDN by Highwinds,' and customers are responding well to it," he said.

Meanwhile, in an effort to expand its client base and maximize revenue streams, VirtuPoint, a rich media development firm, is presently using the Highwinds CDN for the broadcast of live events, on-demand video and static content distribution to deliver client data.

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