JW Player Hires Innovators from Google, Salesforce and Apple to Expand Leadership in Digital Video

NEW YORK, June 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- JW Player, a leader in online and mobile video, today announced that it has added key industry pioneers to its executive team to further drive innovation and growth in the company's video technology solutions.

Eric Hoffert has been named Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Product, and John Luther joins JW Player as Vice President, Devices. Both bring extensive experience working on some of the most innovative technologies in the digital video space.

"Building JW Player's leadership team is key to expanding our global presence and maximizing our clients' success. Focusing on Product and Engineering has long been a trademark of JW Player, and the additions of Eric and John put us in a position to continue to pioneer the next generation of digital video with our clients and partners. Between Eric, John, and our founder Jeroen Wijering, their collective technical leadership has delivered and influenced video content viewed by one out of three people on the planet," said Dave Otten, Co-Founder and CEO, JW Player.

Eric Hoffert brings to JW Player more than 25 years of experience leading digital media product development at Apple, Spotify, AT&T Bell Labs, and various new ventures. At Apple, he co-founded the QuickTime software project and led development of the first real-time software video compression algorithm, for which he received the CEO Technical Award. The patented QuickTime video technology he developed has been downloaded more than a billion times for Mac OS X and Windows. Hoffert has also published multiple papers, lectured widely around the world and holds a total of 23 patents.

Prior to joining the team at JW Player, John Luther spent over 12 years in digital video. He was VP of Product Management at On2 Technologies, where he oversaw the company's VPx video compression technologies and Flix Cloud transcoding service. Google acquired On2 in 2010, and following the acquisition Luther managed HTML5 video technologies in the Google Chrome web browser and led the WebM open video project. The VPx video compression technology he worked on has been downloaded more than a billion times, in Flash, Skype, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Android.

JW Player has also added Eric Poley as VP Enterprise Sales. In this capacity, Eric will lead the upmarket strategies and execution for the company. Eric previously served as the founding VP Sales for Veracode, recognized by Forbes as one of top 20 most promising firms in the US, and Objective Logistics, funded by Google Ventures, where he was tasked with creating the go-to-market strategy for the team's SaaS solutions. Previously, Eric was a key early hire by Salesforce.com, responsible for initiating the firm's enterprise sales offense.

"Dave and I are very excited to announce the appointments of John and Eric to the JW Player team," said Chris Mahl, President, JW Player. "They bring deep expertise and a passion for video innovations at a global level. Along with our development and product teams, we are excited for the great success they will bring our current and future customers. The addition of Eric Poley, the founding member of Salesforce.com's Enterprise sales team, further emphasizes our customer focus."

Hoffert, Poley, and Luther, who have already actively stepped into their roles, will be based out of the company's New York headquarters. For more information, read a blog post announcing the hires here: http://bit.ly/SIjObr.

About JW Player

JW Player is the New York-based startup that pioneered video on the web and is now innovating for the future. Started in 2008 as the world's first open source video player, today the company's customers span the globe across 193 countries and range from Fortune 500 companies to individual bloggers. The company's flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites with 7 billion video streams to 750 million monthly unique viewers across all devices — phones, tablets, and desktops. Nearly five percent of all video streams worldwide are delivered through JW Player. In addition to the player, the company's services include video hosting and streaming, advertising, and analytics. For more information, see www.jwplayer.com.

Media Contacts:
Amy Liu, JW Player
[email protected]
781-640-4575 

Hannah Slocum, Grayling
[email protected] 
646-284-9413

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140625/121828

SOURCE JW Player