Use case · Streaming & media
OTT platforms
An OTT platform is a complete streaming media service delivered over the internet — combining an on-demand library, live channels, multi-device apps, user accounts and subscriptions, and content protection. It brings together storage, transcoding, delivery, and a platform backend at scale. Dedicated, well-connected, EU-hosted infrastructure handles the origin, transcoding, and backend, keeping content and subscriber data sovereign.
Key points
- An OTT platform is a complete streaming service delivered over the internet.
- It often combines an on-demand library with live channels and events.
- It serves apps across many device types, with user accounts and subscriptions.
- Licensed content needs protection through DRM.
- EU hosting keeps the content and subscriber data under European sovereignty.
What is an OTT platform, and what does it need?
An OTT platform — over-the-top — is a complete streaming media service delivered over the internet, bypassing traditional broadcast and cable distribution, of the kind that offers a library of content, and often live channels, to subscribers across their devices. It is more than the video streaming itself: it combines the on-demand library, sometimes live content, apps across many devices, user accounts and subscriptions, content protection, and the delivery to serve it all at scale. An OTT platform is thus a substantial system bringing together streaming, a platform backend, and delivery, and its infrastructure must support all of these together.
What an OTT platform needs, therefore, spans the video infrastructure — storage for the library, transcoding, and delivery — and the platform backend that manages users, subscriptions, and the catalogue, all at the scale a streaming service reaches. The video side holds and delivers the content; the platform side manages who can watch what and handles the accounts and subscriptions; and content protection guards licensed content. This page focuses on the OTT platform as a whole; its component workloads — on-demand, live, transcoding — are covered on their own pages, while what follows attends to bringing them together into a complete streaming service.
Combining on-demand and live
Many OTT platforms combine on-demand content with live content, offering both a library viewers watch when they choose and live channels or events they watch as they happen, which means the platform must handle both kinds of streaming. The on-demand side is storage-heavy and pre-transcoded, serving a library on request; the live side is real-time, ingesting and transcoding streams as they flow; and an OTT platform doing both must provide for each, since they place different demands on the infrastructure. Bringing both together in one service is part of what makes an OTT platform a substantial undertaking.
Supporting both means the infrastructure for on-demand streaming — storage for the library, batch transcoding, delivery — and for live streaming — ingest, real-time transcoding, low-latency delivery — within one platform. The two share delivery infrastructure and the platform backend but differ in how content is prepared and served, so an OTT platform providing both needs infrastructure for each mode. We provide the infrastructure an OTT platform needs for both on-demand and live content — the storage and transcoding each requires, and the delivery for both — so that a platform offering a library and live channels together has the infrastructure for each side of its content, brought together into one service.
Multi-device delivery
An OTT platform serves its content to viewers across many kinds of device — web browsers, mobile apps, smart TVs, streaming devices, and consoles — so it must deliver content in the forms all these devices need. Viewers watch on whatever device they have, and each device type has its own requirements for how content is delivered and played, so the platform must provide the content in the formats and with the delivery each supports, and offer apps or interfaces for the various devices. This multi-device reach is central to an OTT platform, since viewers expect to watch across their devices, and it adds to what the platform must support.
Supporting many devices affects the transcoding and delivery, since content must be available in the formats the devices need, and the platform backend must serve the various apps. The transcoding produces the formats and qualities the range of devices requires; the delivery serves them; and the backend supports the apps across devices, handling accounts and content access consistently wherever a viewer watches. We provide infrastructure for the transcoding into the formats many devices need, the delivery to serve them, and the backend supporting apps across devices — so that an OTT platform can reach viewers on whatever device they use, with content in the forms each needs, served consistently across the platform's reach.
The platform backend: users, subscriptions, catalogue
Beyond the video, an OTT platform has a substantial backend that manages users, subscriptions, and the content catalogue — the parts that make it a service viewers subscribe to and navigate, rather than just video files. The backend handles user accounts and profiles, manages subscriptions and the access they grant, presents the catalogue viewers browse, and often personalises what viewers see; these are application workloads, backed by databases, serving the platform's users. This backend is as much a part of the OTT platform as the video, since it manages who the viewers are, what they can watch, and how they find it.
Hosting this backend means the infrastructure application workloads and their databases need — compute to run the backend services, databases to hold users, subscriptions, and catalogue data, and the reliability and scale a streaming service's user base requires. The backend must be available and responsive, since viewers interact with it to sign in, subscribe, and browse, and it must scale with the subscriber base. We provide the infrastructure an OTT platform's backend needs — compute and databases for the user, subscription, and catalogue management, reliable and scalable — so that the platform side of the service, which manages the viewers and their access, runs well alongside the video infrastructure that delivers the content.
Content protection: DRM
OTT platforms serving licensed or valuable content use digital rights management, DRM, to protect that content from unauthorised copying and access, which is often a requirement of the content licensing. Content owners licensing their content to a platform typically require it be protected, so that it can only be watched by authorised viewers and cannot easily be copied, and DRM provides this protection — encrypting the content and controlling access to it so that only authorised, licensed playback is possible. For a platform serving licensed content, supporting DRM is usually necessary to license that content at all, making it an important part of the platform.
Supporting DRM involves the platform integrating with DRM systems and the infrastructure handling the protected content and the keys that control access, securely. The content is protected, and the platform manages authorised access to it through the DRM system, which the infrastructure supports by handling the protected content and the access control securely. This must be done carefully, since it guards licensed content and the licensing depends on it. We provide infrastructure that supports an OTT platform's content protection — handling the protected content and the DRM integration securely — so that a platform can protect the licensed content it serves as its licensing requires, which is often a condition of being able to offer that content at all.
Scale, reliability, and delivery
An OTT platform operates at the scale of a streaming service, serving many subscribers watching much content, so it must scale and stay reliable across its video and platform infrastructure. The delivery must handle the bandwidth of many viewers streaming, which a content delivery network largely provides, backed by capable origin infrastructure; the transcoding must prepare the content, at the scale of the library and any live streams; and the platform backend must serve the subscriber base reliably. A streaming service's viewers expect it to be available and to stream smoothly, so reliability and scale across all of this are central.
The delivery infrastructure combines the origin holding and serving content, transcoding preparing it, and a content delivery network distributing it to viewers, all at platform scale. The origin must be storage-rich and well-connected; the transcoding must handle the platform's content; and the delivery network distributes the streams to viewers, offloading the origin. We provide the well-connected, storage-rich, capable origin and transcoding infrastructure an OTT platform needs, working with a content delivery network that distributes content to viewers, and the backend infrastructure for the platform — so that an OTT platform can serve its subscribers reliably at scale, with the delivery, transcoding, and backend together supporting the complete service. The CDN is a complementary service working with the origin we host.
Sovereignty for content and subscriber data
An OTT platform holds licensed content and a great deal of subscriber data — accounts, viewing habits, payment information — so where its infrastructure runs governs valuable and sensitive data, making sovereignty a real consideration. The content may be licensed and valuable; the subscriber data includes personal data of European viewers, subject to European protection, and reveals what people watch, which is sensitive; so where the platform's infrastructure runs matters for both the content and the subscribers' data. For a platform serving European subscribers, this is a data-protection and sovereignty concern.
VV Internet Hosting is incorporated in the Netherlands, within the EU, so OTT platform infrastructure hosted with us runs under European jurisdiction and outside the direct reach of the US CLOUD Act, keeping the content and subscriber data under European law. For an OTT platform serving European subscribers, keeping the infrastructure in the EU keeps the subscribers' personal data and viewing information, and the content, under European jurisdiction, which matters for data protection and for the sovereignty of a platform's valuable content and sensitive subscriber data. For platforms to whom this matters, EU hosting addresses the sovereignty of both the content and the subscriber data an OTT platform holds.
Where VV Internet Hosting fits — and where it does not
We host well-connected, storage-rich, dedicated infrastructure for OTT platforms: storage for the content library, compute including GPU acceleration for transcoding, capable origin infrastructure to work with a content delivery network, and the backend infrastructure for user, subscription, and catalogue management — supporting on-demand and live content and the content protection licensing requires, in EU datacenters under European jurisdiction. This suits OTT platforms that want capable, well-connected, sovereign infrastructure for the origin, transcoding, and backend they control. For that, we are a strong fit, and we will size the infrastructure to the platform's content and subscriber base.
We are clear about our limits. We provide the dedicated infrastructure an OTT platform's origin, transcoding, and backend run on; we do not build the OTT platform software itself, provide a turnkey OTT platform, operate it for you, or provide the content delivery network, DRM service, or the content licensing — those are the platform's own, or specialised, or complementary services. A content delivery network for viewer delivery works in front of the origin we host. If you want a turnkey OTT platform or managed streaming service, that is a different kind of offering. We are the dedicated, sovereign infrastructure on which you run your OTT platform's origin, transcoding, and backend — and if that fits your needs, we can host it well.
Related use cases
Questions
OTT platforms, answered plainly
Common questions about hosting for OTT platforms.
What is an OTT platform?
A complete streaming media service delivered over the internet, bypassing traditional broadcast and cable — offering a library of content, often live channels, to subscribers across their devices. It combines the on-demand library, sometimes live content, multi-device apps, user accounts and subscriptions, content protection, and the delivery to serve it all at scale, bringing streaming and a platform backend together.
What is DRM, and why do OTT platforms need it?
Digital rights management — protecting licensed content from unauthorised copying and access by encrypting it and controlling access so only authorised, licensed playback is possible. Content owners licensing content to a platform typically require it be protected, so supporting DRM is usually necessary to license that content at all — making it an important part of an OTT platform serving licensed content.
Does VV Internet Hosting provide a turnkey OTT platform?
No — we provide the dedicated infrastructure an OTT platform's origin, transcoding, and backend run on, in the EU for sovereignty. We don't build the platform software, provide a turnkey OTT platform, operate it for you, or provide the CDN, DRM service, or content licensing — those are your own, or specialised or complementary services. We're the sovereign infrastructure foundation the platform runs on.
Planning OTT platforms infrastructure?
We host dedicated, EU-sovereign infrastructure sized to your workload — and we will tell you plainly when something else fits better. Tell us what you're building.