HBO Inc., will be launching its new online television streaming service HBO Online in April, with news that CTO Otto Berkes has resigned due to the company outsourcing the streaming technology for the service to MLB Advanced.

The April launch date comes from an internal memo, and will be timed to coincide with the new season of Game of Thrones.

The service, first mooted earlier this year, will allow customers to stream HBO’s network of channels over the internet without the need for a cable subscription.

The memo that revealed the date also saw a strategic change in direction for HBO, with a decision to cancel its internal “Project Maui” in favour of outsourcing the streaming to MLB Advanced Media L.C., the technology arm of Major League Baseball.

MLB Advanced Media offers white-label streaming technology for clients like WWE Network, but HBO will likely be its largest client, reported Forbes.

The company justified the decision as “based on an assessment of risk and scope of the product needed to meet HBO’s short term business needs for April 2015;” the team behind Project Maui is the same team responsible for major outages to HBO Go earlier in 2014.

HBO, however, claimed that it wasn’t due to past failings of the group. “This was not a judgment of the team’s work quality or deliverables but rather a bet that an existing streaming service could deliver the needed product faster and at lower risk than Maui” the memo read.

Chief Technology Officer Otto Berkes quit following the announcement, saying in a memo to staff:

“Recently HBO’s management decided to partner with a third party to assist HBO in bringing our OTT service to market in 2015. This is a change in direction from what I planned with HBO and the approach will not utilize my overall capabilities. Therefore, I feel that this is the right time for me to move on from HBO so that I am able to fully pursue my passion building world-class technology teams, products and businesses.”

Berkes was previously a long term Microsoft employee and is credited as one of the founders of the Xbox division.