WINTER PARK, Fla. – Aug. 31, 2009 – Highwinds Network Group, Inc., a multiplatform IP services and content distribution provider, today announced that it is streaming this week’s Hockey Canada Cup for FASTHockey, the premier network for watching amateur hockey live and on-demand, over its content delivery network (CDN). In partnership with Hockey Canada, FASTHockey will produce and deliver live video and archives on-demand for nine games of the Hockey Canada Cup live from GM Place in Vancouver, British Columbia. The tournament begins tonight when Team USA takes on Team Finland in the preliminaries at 6:00 PM (EDT). The games will be available for purchase on the Hockey Canada TV platform at hockeycanada.fasthockey.com or on the FASTHockey Portal at www.fasthockey.com and streamed over the Highwinds CDN.

 

The Hockey Canada Cup is part of a 15,000-game hockey season FASTHockey is delivering to its global community of ice hockey fans at FASTHockey.com and through more than a dozen branded portal sites on the FASTHockey Network. Highwinds is supporting FASTHockey by delivering, over its scalable and reliable CDN, live and on-demand coverage of this season’s hockey games, which includes games from USA Hockey, Hockey Canada, the American Collegiate Hockey Association, and others. FASTHockey selected Highwinds for its ability to stream live events to high volumes of concurrent users and for the unprecedented level of user command and control Highwinds provides to its customers. FASTHockey is using the self-service event provisioning tools in Highwinds’ StrikeTracker^® media manager and reporting console to provision all games for live, intense-action streaming to its paying audiences. With StrikeTracker, games can be created just moments before going live and then monitored in real time with industry-leading analytics.

 

“It takes an enormous effort to pull off the streaming of record-breaking levels of hockey games for our significant following of hockey fans, and we required a CDN partner who could keep up with the fast-paced nature of our business,” said Marc Ruskin, president of FASTHockey. “With the advanced capabilities offered through the Highwinds CDN, we have the ability to control the entire streaming experience. We simply provision new games on-the-fly – a tremendous asset to our process – and our customers continuously enjoy high-quality streams from Highwinds.”

 

“As live event streaming has become more commonplace, savvy audiences have come to expect flawless streaming experiences. And this expectation is magnified when we’re dealing with paid content, when there really is no room for inferior quality,” said Steve Miller, president and CEO of Highwinds. “Our successes with streaming high-profile events, the scalability and reliability of our network, our self-service tools, and our continued growth in the sports industry enable us to keep pace with FASTHockey’s massive amount of hockey coverage and deliver high-quality streams to all viewers. We are pleased to support them in this and future endeavors.”

 

Watch coverage of the Hockey Canada Cup this week at hockeycanada.fasthockey.com.

 

Highwinds is a leader in multiplatform IP services, file replication and content delivery software and services. Since 2002, Highwinds has provided for the advancement of a variety of technologies – including messaging bus architecture, network management, distributed file systems and content routing methods. The Highwinds CDN leverages the company’s high-performance RollingThunder^® network and user-friendly StrikeTracker^® media manager and reporting dashboard to globally deliver content, videos, live events and other media. It sets the pace among content delivery networks by offering advantages in data center peering, real-time analytics, instant account provisioning, complete content control and massive scalability. Highwinds is headquartered in Winter Park, Fla., and maintains data centers throughout North America, South America and Europe. For more information, visit www.highwinds.com.