The Customer
The founder of Jet-Stream, Stef van der Ziel, is something of a legend in the streaming world. His idea to broadcast a live pop concert in Groningen, NL circa 1994 - which was considered disruptive at the time - resulted in one of the first-ever live stream videos broadcasted on the Internet. After this initial stream (which had an online audience of four), he began doing live streams for festivals, eventually amassing so many viewers that their live streams literally (albeit, temporarily) broke the Internet.
During this time, Van der Ziel “realized that live streaming was going to change the world,” and he wanted to be part of it. He then founded Jet-Stream with the mission of professionalizing live streaming over the Internet – and within a year, became the market leader for video streaming in the Netherlands. Today, Jet-Stream delivers billions of streams globally for high-demanding customers around the world.
The Challenge
Jet-Stream began hosting and managing their own infrastructure in Groningen. “We soon found out that if we wanted to focus more on software development and international growth, we needed a better hosting location with a redundant platform,” said Van der Ziel.
Video streaming is one of the most bandwidth-intensive applications on the Internet, so finding a quality high-bandwidth network was essential. Jet-Stream also needed a hosting provider who could deliver on their customers' expectations for uptime. If the customers’ live streams went down, even momentarily, audiences would be lost, customers would be unhappy, and Jet-Stream's credibility could be damaged.
The Solution
Van der Ziel met Con Zwinkels, Leaseweb founder and CEO, 16 years ago. Jet-Stream has been a Leaseweb customer ever since. “In the first five years of operation,” says van der Ziel, “Jet-Stream grew 1800 percent. We were in the fastest ten growing companies in the Netherlands.” Jet-Stream quickly scaled out of the Netherlands and was able to broadcast their streams from Amsterdam throughout Europe using the Leaseweb Network, which ensured low latency and high uptime.
Key Requirements
- Redundant platform
- Low latency
- High uptime
- Central hosting location
Our Solution
- CDN: delivers live stream content with low latency
- Colocation: with certified engineers available 24/7
- Dedicated Servers: with a lower cost per CPU compared to alternative hosting services Platinum SLA: priority access to certified engineers and reduced rates for advanced support
"We guarantee broadcast-grade uptime to our customers, and Leaseweb is able to support that with their quality hosting services and extended SLAs.”
Stef van der Ziel, Owner, Jet-Stream
The Outcome
Since working with Leaseweb, Jet-Stream has scaled out of the Netherlands and beyond while achieving improved infrastructure performance and formidable international growth. “If Leaseweb disappeared tomorrow,” says van der Ziel, “we would have a big issue. Our growth wouldn’t have been possible without you.”