Diane Strutner of Datazoom Tells Us About Its Video Data Platform and COVID-19

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Diane Strutner: We are hanging in there! We are grateful that we’ve not experienced hardships like so many other families have. Lots of time spent around the house gardening, cooking and finding projects to do when we’re not working. Most importantly, our puppy is a truly an everlasting beacon of joy — when in doubt, get the dog!

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Datazoom.

Diane Strutner: I’ve spent my career working at startups, and my previous role brought me into the video streaming space. After working in video analytics, I realized more generally, our industry lacked access to real-time, standardized data. It’s a huge problem for video publishers, and the vendors who support them, and this means that we’re not able to make meaningful changes to optimize to grow revenues, improve the user experience, and optimize resources. Datazoom is an enabler for actionability in the video space — pretty exciting!

How does Datazoom innovate? 

Diane Strutner: We’re always looking at ways that we can help and solve problems for our customers, and that drives a lot of our innovation and roadmap. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Diane Strutner: Well, when the world was told to stay inside, we all started to watch a LOT more content. Our industry has seen a boom with the onset of a pandemic. We have more people trying out new streaming services than ever before. This has accelerated the ongoing shift from broadcast cable to over-the-top and IPTV delivery. We’ve even seen companies like Disney announce organization-wide restructuring to focus on video streaming. Overall, this means that the opportunity, and need, for Datazoom has accelerated.

And we’ve also seen other industry sectors adopting video solutions enmass. All conferences have had to go online. Doctors visits are now virtual. We’re being educated at a distance and through a screen. So much has changed, in so little time, that I think we’ve not even seen the start of video’s real growth potential. 

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and Datazoom in the future?

Diane Strutner: The best way I’ve found to deal with stress and anxiety at work is to take extra time to plan out my day/week, and to tackle the hardest things first thing. Procrastinating requires so much additional emotional energy, and distracts from doing other things well. 

I’m excited by the opportunity that Datazoom has in the future of video. Video is now not just for entertainment purposes but is sitting at the center of telemedicine, events, education, gaming, and so many other exciting and growing industries. Since Datazoom provides such a fundamental capability for any industry that in part or full drives business and services with video, the opportunity in front of us is absolutely huge. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Diane Strutner: We’ve pioneered a new category for ourselves – the Video Data Platform. Framework wise, we emulate the Customer Data Platform category, and in terms of the data we look at we can be confused for Video Analytics companies. But we are fundamentally different, and in fact, could integrate with or alongside companies from each of these categories. 

The streaming space is screaming for better solutions for observability and optimization. Since you need really great data to power both of those activities, there’s never been a greater demand for access to real-time standardized data than there is today. 

Your final thoughts?

Diane Strutner: For the first time in many years, I am truly looking forward to celebrating New Year’s Eve. 2020, I will not miss you.

Your website?

http://datazoom.io