Skinkers
It has been a year of transition for Skinkers. The company has reorganised itself into two separate units, an enterprise division and LiveStation. It has also raised an additional £6m of capital of which £1.4m came from SPARK taking SPARK’s total investment to £5.2m.
The enterprise division is built on the launch of the Live Notification Platform (LNP) which was developed out of Skinker’s expertise in desktop communications. The platform enables organisations to deliver priority notifications and distribute heavy content through a controlled, highly versatile and secure universal communication platform.
Over the last year the LNP has been brought to market with significant interest from blue chip companies across several sectors. The company has won new clients such as FlyBe, Metro, American Airlines and Brewin Dolphin and has a number of global companies engaged with proof of concepts.
Though the slowdown in enterprise software and financial services in particular has had an impact on sales cycles the company has begun to modularise its solutions to enable the platform to more quickly illustrate the value and payback periods.
In the previous year the company had begun to develop a disruptive live streaming internet broadcasting solution. The solution was built on technology co-developed with Microsoft Research and is designed to deliver uninterrupted live TV to large audiences at dramatically reduced costs. In Feb 2008 a beta version of the technology was bought to the market in the form of LiveStation.
LiveStation provides an internet TV player which allows the user to watch Live TV at a high quality from many of the world’s leading broadcasters. Initially launched with a range of news channels the product is steadily being improved to encompass additional channels and social collaboration features. The service has attracted partnership and strategic interest from many broadcasters and technology companies.