Mariner, a global leader in IP video service monitoring and troubleshooting technologies, has announced a major milestone in the growth of its innovative, award-winning flagship product. Mariner xVu is now monitoring more than seven million devices, making it a global market leader in the IPTV industry.

“Globally, Mariner xVu is now monitoring more IPTV set-top boxes — on a managed network — than all other vendors combined,” says Curtis Howe, president and CEO of Mariner. “The Mariner xVu product monitors beyond the edge of the network, and consistently detects and isolates complex IP video problems that other monitoring tools miss.”

Mariner xVu has been supporting the Microsoft Mediaroom environment since 2009 and has recently announced support for the new functionality in Microsoft Mediaroom client 2.2. Other ecosystems supported include Cisco Videoscape, Viaccess-Orca (RiGHTv and Compass), and Minerva iTVFusion.

The solution currently monitors three of the top five service providers in North America. According to findings from Point Topic and the Broadband Forum, the number of IPTV subscribers grew by 3.8 million globally in Q1 of 2012, ranking as one of the biggest quarters ever for IPTV growth.

Mariner has increased the number of devices monitored by that number in the same time period, demonstrating that it can keep pace with the rate of growth of the IPTV industry and the unrelenting need to monitor subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE). Additionally, the rapid adoption of IPTV is further substantiated by research numbers — provided by Digital TV Research — that predict global IPTV subscribers will triple by 2017.

The solution currently monitors three of the top five service providers in North America

“The Mariner xVu technology was designed from the outset to monitor a wide range of video systems and technologies,” said Howe. “Combined with the tremendous scalability of the core platform, Mariner xVu is ideally positioned to support service providers as they extend their IP video services to include OTT and new screens on new devices in the connected home.”

Mariner’s IPTV consulting services revolve around the unknowns and uncertainties of IPTV requirements. “The scope of our experience flows from the IPTV business planning requirements through project management and customer servicing processes required to support a successful IPTV launch,” the company says.

Consulting services competencies include: service definition, business case and risk assessment, market planning, technology strategy, operations impact assessment and programme planning.

With over a decade of experience in the IPTV business, Mariner has worked in several ecosystems and with various technologies to create IPTV designs and deployments that generate results for the service providers that utilise them.