Wowza Streaming Engine licensing options

2020-05-18 21:35:00

Today (2K20) the product line of Wowza Media Systems, LLC consists of three independent products:

  • Wowza Streaming Engine (software to install on-premises physicall/rented server or VDS / VPS);
    • Wowza Streaming Engine in the Cloud (ready to use virtual machine images with preinstalled Wowza Streaming Engine available in Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud and RackSpace);
  • Wowza Cloud (cloud streaming service);
  • Wowza ClearCaster (hardware appliance).

This article is about Wowza Streaming Engine software only - the most popular and most sought-after Wowza Media product in Russia and around the world. A brief description of the functionality and technical characteristics of the Wowza Streaming Engine media server can be found here.. In this article, we will consider licensing options for this software.

There are two main ways to license the Wowza Streaming Engine:

  • Perpetual license - Wowza Streaming Engine Pro perpetual license;
  • Monthly payment license - Wowza Streaming Engine Subscription (software subscription).

Each licensing method has its own characteristics, in which we will describe below.

Wowza Streaming Engine Pro perpetual

A perpetual software license require one time fee and, according to the name, the software works without limitation of the period of use. The license is issued for one running instance of the software (server) without binding to the hardware or operating system, it can be transferred to other machine. A one-time payment for a license is the most convenient way to purchase software for corporate users, both in terms of budget planning and accounting, and from the side of maintaining the software after purchase. There are no monthly or annual transactions, there is no risk of system shutdown due to late payment, there is no dependence on changes in the exchange rate. It should be noted that the licensing policy of Wowza Media allows the acquisition of a perpetual license only to companies that are not Internet infrastructure services (Service Providers). If you are building a commercial CDN network or planning to provide streaming services through your Wowza server to end users (actually rent your Wowza to end users) you need to subscribe to Wowza Streaming Engine Subscription. When purchasing a perpetual license, the buyer gets the opportunity to choose a license with a period of free technical support and updates of 1 year or 3 years. During this period, all new software versions, updates and bug fixes will be available for download at no extra charge. Also, if necessary, it will be possible to get technical support directly from Wowza specialists by sending an appropriate request by e-mail. After the end of paid maintenance and support period it can be extended.

In addition to the period of technical support and updates, the perpetual license is available in two delivery options: with verification via the Internet or a USB key. A license with an Internet verification requires an Internet connection for the entire life of the server. You do not need to open firewall rules for incoming connections, but outgoing connections to send an HTTP request to the licensed server must be allowed. The list of server names does not change; access via HTTP proxy is supported.

The license for the USB key, respectively, does not require an Internet connection, but at the same time it costs significantly more.

Wowza Streaming Engine Subscription.

A monthly license is a flexible way of licensing software that does not require significant investment. By paying a license only 1 month in advance, you can reduce one-time costs and / or distribute them for a long time. This type of license is well suited for one-time projects, and you can always refuse to renew a subscription and restore it again if necessary. An important feature of this license is that the number of servers running with one license is inot limited. This allows you to quickly deploy any number of servers, depending on the expected load. Of course, you will need to pay for additional servers at the end of the month, otherwise further use of the software will be impossible. This approach, when used in a corporate environment, has some downside, since technical staff, for testing or oversight, can run several servers with the same license. In this case, you still have to pay for all servers.

Instead of purchasing a license with a monthly payment, you can use the option of payment for 1 year in advance Wowza Streaming Engine Annual Subscription. In this case, the number of financial transactions is significantly reduced and the cost of a license for a month of use will also be less. When you start an additional server, you will need to pay for 1 month extra.

The cost of technical support and updates is included in this type of license and does not require any additional costs for renewal. This type of license is available only with verification via the Internet, there is no delivery option to USB.

Other license types: Trial, Test, and Developer

In addition to the full licenses described above, there are several types of specialized free licenses, with restrictions on the time of use and restrictions on functionality.

Trial - available after registering on wowza.com. Can be used for 30 days. It has restrictions on 3 live streams and 10 spectators, a forced transcoder logo and the inability to use with CDN in the role of caching origin.

Developer - also available after registering with wowza.com. Can be used for 180 days. It has a restriction on 1 live stream and forced transcoder logo, inability to use with CDN in the role of caching origin.

Test - available upon a request. Valid for 30 days, has a restriction of the forced transcoder logo and caching origin mode.