IBC Daily 2017 Article. The last pieces of the puzzle come together.

Happy to share the article published on IBC2017 Daily D2 Saturday 16 September 2017.

For a number of years now, the media industry has been transforming itself and its production workflows to be more digital using IP-based technology and virtualisation. This has been done to meet increasing demands from consumers to access content on a multitude of different devices. However, this has not been an easy task and is far from perfect. Contributing to more channels means additional resources are needed and this has put pressure on traditional broadcasters to review their business plans in order to incorporate new workflows and develop their own digital platforms to showcase and manage their content within the same budgets.

Today, the developments of IP production standards, such as SMPTE 2110, and the acceleration of cloud computing technologies are opening the doors to innovation and introducing systemic changes to traditional linear and non-linear production workflows. Our goal is to ensure that media organisations can also embed and process real-time data so they can provide a better user experience for any audience. Somehow, the pieces of the puzzle that were difficult to put together before (due to lack of interoperability, etc), now start to match and converge, allowing media organisations to connect traditional TV production facilities to new, software-defined platforms that push packaged content to multiple media consumption outlets.

Once this is in place, big data and artificial intelligence will further spread these horizons in the future, helping media organisations to better engage with audiences and provide personalised content with more relevant advertising.

Since the last IBC, we see many new players entering the media industry, announcing disruption and promising access to all these enabling technologies. However, does the value only come in accessing technologies? Could we just say that massive OTT investments will help content owners and media organisations to gain audience engagement in a short period of time? The answer is not that easy and straightforward.Nowadays, we see that a large majority of successful companies do not reinvent the wheel. Instead, they focus their energy on understanding the needs of their clients and finding the best solutions to allow users to find what they need quickly and easily. This process has a lot of value at the moment, however, we aim to do more.

By integrating and adapting technologies through software solutions, we give media organisations more than just access and transport. In this respect, we combine virtualisation, robust network technology, operational expertise, and production functionalities to enable the delivery of fast, attractive media tools for producing, packaging and delivering content to multiple outlets.

Over the last year, we have been developing a B2B service platform to support media organisations and content owners to re-purpose and personalise their content offerings. Content control is key so our new generation platforms and services (such as Eurovision FLEX or Eurovision NEX) are set up to allow media organisations to go beyond the flawless satellite, fibre, cloud or IP content distribution and gain true command of their content processing, packaging and distribution. Eurovision Media Services is proud to showcase our latest development at this year's IBC.