Object Matrix – Finding innovative approaches to sustainable video delivery

Nicholas Pearce

​Co-Founder, Object Matrix

As media organisations look to improve operational efficiency, by maximising resources and time, there is a growing realisation that a more unified approach to digital asset archive storage is required. Workflows need to be better connected, and in order to work more efficiently, users need accelerated search and access capabilities.

Improved media asset security, better auditing, and more automation aren’t just nice to have features, they are essential tools for companies to respond to the ever-increasing scale of content production. By transforming workflows, media organisations have the opportunity to bridge the gap between creatives and content. However, there are a number of barriers that need to be overcome along the way, such as poor storage practice, legacy infrastructure and ineffective media orchestration.

Outdated, ineffective storage practice

Events of the last two and a half years have really shone a spotlight on how media organisations manage their assets. Poor storage processes are causing real headaches for production and post-production teams as they search and locate content. Delays in finding footage can impact not only the editing workload for that day, but when multiplied across assets it can seriously impact lead time for entire projects. It means that companies might need to allocate budget to additional freelance resources or risk missing deadlines. Organisations need to think about optimised media storage as a crucial component within the workflow. The time saved at the stage where content is accessed can significantly improve overall operational efficiency. By removing any variables that might mean assets are difficult to find, or worse lost completely, teams can respond to project demands much more dynamically.

Some of the most problematic storage practices include lack of formal processes for backing up and archiving content, and the use of separate data silos. These practices can result in lost or difficult to find assets, and the inability to search using keywords and relocate assets when needed can result in duplication and disorganisation. All of these factors contribute towards creating a system that does not enable users to work in a logical and intuitive way, hindering editors’ ability to directly search for footage, and content managers’ ability to control media asset libraries. If producers and editors cannot self-serve access to content then time and money will be lost.

​Media orchestration and scaled storage

In terms of media orchestration, the absence of a tiered or hybrid storage platform is another example of poor practice that can and does cause real problems. It’s important that media companies recognise that not all assets are the same. Some content needs to be actively worked on with nearline accessibility, either on-prem using integrated, virtualised access for dispersed teams or with minimal egress costs if stored in the cloud. Other content can be archived but the footage may need to be revisited, perhaps during key milestones or anniversaries. Some assets are very unlikely to be accessed again and just need to be kept for posterity, so these can be placed in cost-effective deep archive storage.

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A hybrid data storage system using non-proprietary solutions, which allows ageing assets to be moved from one level to another, makes for a more efficient approach. A clear process for retrieving footage and utilising metadata tagging for automation where appropriate, results in a much more streamlined and integrated workflow. Unless an effective future-proofing strategy is implemented that allows users to easily search across several tiers of storage in different locations, operational efficiency can never be achieved.

Equally important is the need to recognise that storage requirements are not static. As business needs change, storage may need to be scaled accordingly. But many solutions can leave media organisations locked into agreements or struggling to access the metadata associated with their content. The ability to respond in a flexible and agile way to business needs, is arguably more important now than ever before. In 2021, the value of the media and entertainment market reached 2.34 trillion U.S. dollars, experiencing a growth of 10.4 percent compared to 2020. In the following years the growth is projected to slow, but figures are expected to reach 2.93 trillion by the end of 2026. That is a lot of media content, and it all needs to be stored.

Legacy infrastructure and integration

In addition to the influx of new content, companies also need to consider their huge media archives and the legacy infrastructure that supports them, While adopting cloud storage may seem like the answer to establishing a fit for purpose system that addresses the various issues, unless a media company is born in the cloud, there is sometimes still a business requirement for an on-prem cache of storage. This leads to the thorny issue of how to integrate new, shiny cloud-based storage with existing on-premise storage. Establishing cloud-based storage in a disjointed way without integrating with current storage is clearly a path to disaster.

 There are a great many proprietary storage solutions on the market, and these solutions may work well in isolation, but they do not, by their very nature, allow for integration with third party vendors, or toolsets. As a media company, if you’re trying to create seamless connected workflows, the inability to integrate vendors and solutions is a real sticking point.

While it can be challenging to integrate cloud storage and on-prem storage in a hybrid workflow, it is not insurmountable. Key components for an efficient storage system, that enables both end users and media managers to locate content, means tight integration, a unified system and the synchronisation of media and metadata. Successful hybrid workflows need media to be accessible across all cloud and on-prem locations, and those assets need to be controlled through a centralised interface.

More staff work remotely now than ever before, and the business case to transition away from legacy infrastructure has never been more pressing. But accessing content through virtualised infrastructure comes with security considerations and its own set of challenges. Clearly, security of assets has to be a top priority when transforming and connecting workflows, but it cannot restrict ease of access for valid users. When it comes to media asset security, features such as firewalls, data immutability, and data encryption, all help to reduce the risk of a security breach. But without a connected hybrid system and a central point of access, companies cannot optimise built-in auditing to track user behaviour. By implementing strong user authentication, media companies can find a balance between streamlining infrastructure for ease of use and keeping precious assets secure.

Media and metadata management

Poor metadata management is a real barrier to achieving operational efficiency. Searchable content goes hand-in-hand with hybrid workflows, if organisations don’t know what they have stored on-premises and in the cloud, it’s as good as lost. Timecode metadata is key to enabling end users to search and monetise an archive. Using AI to automatically enrich media assets with timestamped metadata helps teams to quickly find exactly what they’re looking for among their content archives. Metadata belongs to organisations and not their vendors, and therefore, it is vital that metadata can be ported across MAM, DAM or PAM, on-prem or cloud storage.

As media companies seek to work quicker, better, smarter and more securely, there is a strong argument for reviewing and transforming workflows so that a more unified and connected approach can be taken. But it is also the responsibility of vendors to champion interoperability with their solutions so that content doesn’t become siloed. In the new era of high-volume content production there is no room for inefficiency. By thinking laterally about their storage requirements, organisations can establish systems that are connected, intuitive and fit for purpose. Systems that will, most importantly, help users collaborate and protect content - whilst evolving alongside media organisations as we enter a new future of entertainment.

Synamedia’s Quortex – If your streaming video arrives cold, it’s time for a new oven

Marc Baillavoine 

CEO of Synamedia's Quortex

Have you ever thought of delivering streaming video content in the same way your local pizza shop prepares its orders? They make it fresh, on-demand and just-in-time. Not only is it more efficient but it also reduces energy and waste. Plus, who wants to eat cold pizza?

With streaming video, the same efficiency benefits as pizza delivery apply alongside huge sustainability advantages.

All it requires is a completely new way of architecting video delivery. No big deal.


What is just-in-time (video) delivery?

82% of all Internet traffic is predicted to be consumed by online videos including live and on-demand streaming services in 2022, according to Cisco’s Visual Network Indicator. However, in some cases, streaming video can have a higher carbon footprint than linear delivery due to its unicast nature. A modern and highly efficient video delivery mechanism, such as just-in-time delivery, becomes critically important to deliver the best ROI and set a sustainable future with a lowered carbon footprint.

When video delivery via the Internet was first implemented, its technology requirements were assumed to be the same as those required for traditional pay-TV delivery. What has become more apparent over the decades is that user expectations vary depending on the content they’re viewing and devices they’re viewing it on. Internet-delivered video simply shouldn’t be transported in a one-size fits all approach the way traditional pay-TV would be. Adjustments that are made with viewer experiences in mind would unlock savings across multiple areas, including infrastructure and energy consumption.

How can this be addressed? The answer is that the traditional push model of video being processed and transported to sit in the CDN until one day someone might request the content must be completely updated. There must be a just-in-time approach that provides exactly the resources required to deliver a specific piece of video content at any given time. If no-one is watching a channel, it simply frees up those resources while reducing energy usage.

This methodology provides time to market and considerable energy and cost advantages over existing cloud approaches and ensures that every deployed resource has a purpose. For example, for long tail content unique, just-in-time technology reduces cloud costs up to 67%.

Does this new “oven” for just-in-time delivery exist today?

Yes, it has been developed by Synamedia’s Quortex. Its multi-tenant SaaS technology builds video streams on-the-fly, based on the end users’ requirements and matched to viewers’ locations, devices and time zones. It quickly adapts to fluctuating audience demand, unpredictable network, infrastructure context and limitations, and automatically scales cloud resources up and down, reducing waste by using spot instances that take advantage of spare cloud capacity at a fraction of the typical operational cost, while maintaining the quality of experience. With it, video content is delivered when a viewer wants it, how they want it and in high quality – just as we like our pizza: with the toppings we want, saving the ones we don’t for those that do.

Why is this just-in-time more sustainable?  

While it is eye-catching to use figures about energy savings, there are no standard formulas or data points to ensure we are not comparing apples with oranges. To get a realistic sense of energy costs savings video delivery must be evaluated from beginning to end. Let’s start with the CDN.

CDNs were historically designed to deliver web content. As streaming video emerged, technology developers fine-tuned the CDN for video with optimized caches that ensure that ABR content is cached as close as possible to the viewer for delivery at scale; such is the case of Synamedia’s FLUID EdgeCDN.

Additionally, technologies such as Low Latency DASH, Low Latency HLS (LL-HLS) and the High Efficiency Streaming Protocol (HESP) have reduced the latency of live streaming to six seconds from 20-60 seconds, in line with broadcast, as evidenced on Synamedia’s VIVID Low-Latency OTT solution.

Thanks to massive advancements with technology, content providers can now optimize the latency for different applications within a service, making it easy to launch new monetization applications, and save compute and storage resources.

How do you measure the cost or energy usage?

It’s no secret that there are challenges when it comes to quantifying CDN energy usage and much of this is due to a lack of consistency across the industry. The three main discrepancy factors to consider include:

  1. Energy consumption of different technologies are totaled and tracked in an inconsistent way. Instantaneous load and memory impact CPUs and the industry has yet to decide how to measure – whether it’s measuring transport by volume or by capacity. 
  2. There are networks that connect internal and external servers. In traditional, non-shared environments, servers can be turned off to lower energy costs. However, servers that are shared internally (multi-tenancy) and externally (connected over the Internet) are connected via a network and that network cannot be shut down.
  3. Content that is thought to be more essential than others and in some cases, is mandated to be delivered. Think of natural disaster warnings for example. This content is traditionally stored in cache on an edge server and future requests for that content will be served up via that cache which can reduce energy usage because it’s not downloaded from its origin every time. The challenge here is that the cache uses energy as well.

To overcome these challenges, an industry-wide consensus needs to be reached. Organizations like The Greening of Streaming are focused on helping create unified thinking around end-to-end energy efficiency in the technical supply chain that underpins streaming services.

As the industry standardizes its measuring methods savings will become evident, meanwhile we will continue to deliver the “hot pizza” how and when it’s demanded!

iSIZE Technologies – Finding innovative approaches to sustainable video delivery

Sergio Grce, 

CEO, iSIZE Technologies

Finding innovative approaches to sustainable video delivery

The billions of streaming users around the world get their content from a mere handful of large streaming service providers, each in turn accounting for more bits per second than any other type of internet usage. More than a billion hours of content is consumed on a single streaming platform every single day. Netflix recently claimed that a single hour of streaming a film or drama has the equivalent CO2 emissions as charging 12 smartphones; when you consider that the average American spends nearly 12 hours a day streaming some form of media, that soon mounts up.


The media & entertainment industry is facing an urgent need to reduce its environmental impact, and many of the biggest brands have set ambitious goals of achieving net zero by the end of 2022. In parallel with this mammoth task, the industry must ensure there is no compromising on the impeccable quality and end user experience that today’s audiences demand.

What is needed are truly innovative approaches that are readily available and scalable today, alongside the development of next-generation technologies to ensure that quality and efficiency are continually pushed to new limits.

Looking beyond video compression

The electricity usage for data centres, data transmission and devices, and then on the CO2 emissions associated with each unit of electricity generation, are how we measure and track the carbon footprint of the streaming industry. To reduce the risk of rising energy use and emissions, investments in efficient next-generation computing and communications technologies are needed, alongside continued efforts to decarbonise the electricity supply.

iSIZE believes we need innovative approaches for a brave new world that look beyond the use of standard video compression algorithms. AI-based pre-processing prior to encoding makes the ingested content easier, and more efficient, to encode – this is where we see the biggest gains being made.

The aim of new approaches to video delivery, such as iSIZE’s, is to bring together psychovisual approaches and artificial intelligence to remove video information that is known to be imperceptible by viewers while reaching outstanding compression levels by standard MPEG or AOMedia encoders.

Not all pixels are created equal. With an understanding of how people perceive video content, it becomes possible to remove unnecessary detail in the input video content that incurs significant bitrate overhead in typical video encoders.

The end user experience is a major point of differentiation, so it is vital that the above process creates zero impairment to the visual quality – whether we are sharing videos for family contact or for business, we do not want them to look blurry/noisy or cartoon-like. This is where quantifying visual distortion becomes critical, and it is here that AI and deep psychovisual pre-processing become a gamechanger.

Leveraging neural networks for this type of video pre-processing is ideally suited to GPU operations; computations can be run in a massively parallel architecture. On a small scale it could run on a typical PC or mobile phone, since all such devices now have increased GPU or NPU (neural processing unit) capabilities. Broadcasters and content providers could also use cloud processing to deliver at scale and at resolutions up to Ultra HD. Any processing overhead is more than counterbalanced by the reduction in encoding complexity as well as a significant decrease in the bandwidth requirements for the compressed video.

Removing complexity with AI

An AI engine learns to distinguish perceptually unnoticeable details in the content in an autonomous manner and without requiring any input from the encoder. The result is an increase in the compression efficiency of AVC, HEVC, VP9 and AV1 between 12% to 50% (depending on the use case), as validated by extensive commercial tests and human mean opinion scores obtained with standard protocols like ITU-T P.910 tests.

The other key factor in successfully implementing such technology is to ensure 100% standard compliance and cross-standard/cross-codec applicability; this removes reliance on any standard or format and can be applied to any application, platform, or workflow that must move video data quickly and efficiently. The result is seamless integration without breaking any video coding or streaming standards.

Avoiding additional compute complexity in already complicated workflows is a key issue for many customers. Solutions that increase the efficiency and performance of all the latest codec standards including AVC/H.264, HEVC/H.265, and VP9 typically add significant compute complexity at the same time. iSIZE’s codec-independence and fast execution means the capability to reduce video delivery system bitrate requirements without adding significant complexity. Our approach eliminates the need to wait for new codec standards to be developed and widely adopted – a lengthy process in an industry that is moving at pace.

At iSIZE our belief is that sustainability and greater efficiency for seamless end-user experiences are not mutually exclusive. We are also proponents of implementing standards-based solutions, that are available today, and can begin to reduce the environmental impact of video streaming immediately.

Ateme – The world is under threat, but what is our industry doing to protect our fragile ecosystems?

Rémi Beaudouin, 

Chief Strategy Officer, Ateme

The recent extreme weather has shown us that climate change appears to have arrived in force. The human cost is already extremely worrying – last year, for example, over 180 people perished in floods in Germany and Belgium, while over 500 people died in a heat wave in British Columbia, Canada alone. And this year, Europe has seen its worst drought in 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent “under distress”.

In addition, one of the most concerning climate change tipping points has also sadly been reached, with a section of the Amazon forest now producing more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb.

There can now be no doubt that a massive collective effort is necessary to slow down climate change, and it will require teamwork across every stakeholder group, with businesses having a massive part to play.

Focusing on the video streaming niche, for instance, reveals some important insight that requires urgent and decisive action. According to research by Emma Stewart, Ph.D, Sustainability Officer at Netflix, for example, in 2020, one hour of Netflix streaming was equal to driving a gas-powered passenger car a quarter mile (or 400 meters).

Given the scale of Netflix and the other streaming services around the world, this equates to significant levels of energy consumption. Assuming that around 20 million customers were to watch a service like Netflix for an average of two hours each day, the environmental impact is equivalent to driving over 37 billion passenger miles.

Part of the challenge also lies in the arrival of new, energy-hungry technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. As these find more use cases across the streaming industry, they will put our collective environmental performance under even greater scrutiny and pressure. Positive change must rise up the list of priorities for organizations across our sector if we are to play a full role in protecting the future of the planet.

Investing in better environmental performance

But how can streaming service providers act on these priorities and contribute to reducing climate change while still providing a top-notch viewing experience?

From Ateme’s perspective, we are concerned about video delivery’s global warming contribution as viewers are increasingly shifting to more resource-hungry options. This shift is driven especially by a demand for interactivity and personalization.

Our TITAN and NEA delivery solutions, for example, have reduced the energy consumption of streaming video delivery for a wide selection of customers across the industry. Specifically, improvements in their performance over three years resulted last year in a two-third decrease in energy consumption for OTT delivery compared to the average consumption in 2018.

Moreover, Ateme remains a committed and active player in the pursuit of better environmental and energy performance. Initiatives such as ‘Greening of Streaming’ are offering a new sustainable association, and as a founding member, Ateme is working with other organizations in the streaming industry to share best practices and drive greater energy efficiency across the sector.

The technology challenges – and opportunities – are diverse. For example, with more video being consumed online, there is also a need for new codecs offering better compression to address ever-growing bandwidth requirements. This will deliver a range of wider benefits by reducing VOD storage requirements, a capability that cascades to reducing cache storage requirements in CDN distribution.

Ateme continues to invest in delivering advances in encoding that have allowed service providers to consistently achieve the highest levels of video quality at the lowest bitrates. This represents just one of many ways in which Ateme aims to play a leadership role in helping our industry meet its obligations to future generations.

This includes leveraging advances in microprocessor technologies, accelerating the use of distributed parallel processing, and implementing cloud-native microservices (among many other initiatives) to limit the impact of video service providers on the environment. What’s more, energy savings also contribute to a stronger bottom line, both by reducing consumption of encoding resources and by reducing bitrate contributing to lower storage costs and greater bandwidth efficiency.

Ultimately, going green is not just about acting on a collective sense of environmental concern and social obligation; it is by far the best business strategy both now and for the future.

Amino – The sustainability vs. profitability debate

Jonny McKee, 

​VP of Product Management & Customer Support for Amino

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Today’s business leaders are coming to the conclusion that profitability and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. In fact, creating strategies on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) programs has been gaining significant momentum for companies that are looking beyond the traditional bottom line to measure their impact. Yet, balancing thin profit margins with long-term sustainability goals and regulatory compliance requires sound principles, a well thought-out plan, and strong leadership to achieve optimal shareholder and stakeholder value.

Of course, there are many reports that draw a direct correlation between sustainable practices, share prices, and business performance. Just follow the money. According to a 2021 global survey by FTSE Russell, an index provider, sustainable investment is now standard globally where 84% of asset owners are either implementing or evaluating sustainability into their portfolios.  Analysis by BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, found that in 2020 more than eight out of 10 sustainable investment funds performed better than share portfolios not based on ESG criteria.

If protecting the environment and investing in employees weren’t enough, this market validation is a major motivator to unite financial outcomes with sustainability ones. The strategy shifts sustainability from a ‘nice to have’ to an essential corporate imperative.

Based on experience gained at Amino, we’ve outlined some core areas that focus on sustainability goals – without sacrificing quality or profits.

  • Create a circular supply chain

The circular economy model is gaining lots of attention because it is designed to reduce companies’ environmental footprint and operational waste, while leveraging resources efficiently. Essentially it means businesses create supply chains that recover or recycle the resources used to create their products. It is a supply chain that is sustainable – and traceable – at every stage.

There are many details to be considered, including use of recycled plastic or paper instead of plastic, type of glue being used, transport methods. Which suppliers are willing to be audited for compliance? If they are part of a conglomerate, will the parent company also be willing to be audited? And are they as committed to sustainable manufacturing processes?

The use of recycled plastics for devices and accessories is an obvious step in the road to sustainability. However, to do this and retain high quality standards requires considerable effort and expertise. For example, when manufacturing electronics, careful control of the raw materials is required to ensure that the finished product meets all relevant standards, such as the safety and flammability standards of plastic material for parts in devices, which dictate the use of fire-retardant materials. This requires the manufacturer to not only use recycled materials but also ensure that they are traceable and for the composition of those materials to be known, so that the finished product meets all relevant safety standards.

To reach a high percentage of recycled materials in the device it is essential to use recycled materials for all surfaces rather than just those in the chassis that are unseen by the consumer. That dictates that a high-quality surface finish can be achieved while using recycled materials where consistency of the source plastics is not as high as with virgin material. This does not need to be a compromise, but rather a case of understanding your materials and their capabilities.

Packaging should be as small as possible. Increase the amount of recycled and recyclable packaging while reducing the number of paper inserts in each box. Rather than print set-up and user guides, only include the safety details necessary to comply with regional regulatory requirements. The safely leaflet can include a QR code and URL indicating where relevant collaterals can be found online. Even with printed materials, plant-based inks and glues can be used rather than the petrochemical-based alternative commonly used.

Take for instance a set-top box package. It typically includes related items like cables. Cables are traditionally wrapped in plastic bags which while recyclable, may not be easily recycled by consumers and often end up in landfills. Other options include biodegradable plastic bags and paper ‘ties’ to secure the cables.

At Amino we have found that the use of recycled packaging adds approximately 8% to our packaging cost. However, as technology improves and becomes more widely adopted, we believe this will decrease.

  • Commit to energy efficiency

An area of ongoing focus is energy. Power consumption is tightly tied to carbon emission. One kilowatt hour produces approximately one pound of carbon dioxide. There are many statistics flying around about the true impact of video streaming on carbon emissions as the growth in internet traffic has surged the last few years. Nonetheless there are improvements to be made.

One effort to help reduce the streaming carbon footprint is the Voluntary Industry Agreement with a mission to improve the energy consumption of Complex Set Top Boxes within the EU. The primary objective of the Voluntary Agreement is to continue improvements in the energy efficiency of set-tops without jeopardizing their intended uses and functionalities. This underscores the trade-offs between reducing power consumption and consumer experience. Achieving the lowest stamp of power ratings means many peripherals on the CPE will also need to power down. The effect means that coming out of standby might take longer, which we believe is a compromise most consumers will accept because of the environmental benefit.

This then becomes a consumer education issue to communicate the environmental benefits of waiting a few more seconds to power up, which can have its own pay-off by building brand loyalty with environmentally conscious consumers.

  • Reject planned obsolescence in favor of upcycling

One of the most infamous examples of planned obsolescence comes from Apple. In 2018, the company was found guilty, and subsequently admitted, to the fact that older iPhone models were slowed down through iOS updates. They were ordered to pay a hefty fine and, it can be argued, their reputation was damaged in the process.

In a pay TV example, the operator business model is to provide a service to the consumer. It is therefore important that every aspect of service is considered for the entire lifespan of a subscription. From the point that the consumer subscribes to the service and receives hardware through to and including replacement of a device years later is important.

The point is to prevent obsolescence – planned or not. Software should extend the life of a device to avoid costly hardware replacements. Device ‘upcycle programs’ allow operators to radically overhaul the software and services deployed in a customer’s home without any changes or upgrades to the consumer’s hardware – and keep devices in use rather than in landfills. Think of the environmental effects of remotely updating firmware and apps, as well as helping customer service agents resolve support issues without sending a technician, in a truck, to the consumer home.

Summary

There is an incredible opportunity for industry leaders to shape a profitable future for their businesses by adopting sound principles of sustainability into their overall strategy. Going further, integrating sustainability into the corporate culture can have profound effects in other areas of the business including job satisfaction of employees, the strength of customer relations, or even the effectiveness of a company’s board. A focus on sustainability can have a knock-on effect to help companies be more resilient during market downturns.

While it’s not always easy being green, the effort has undeniable potential to help people, the planet – and yes, profits.

Learn more about Amino’s Upcycling Program here, and download the company’s latest ESG report.

TMT Insights – Q&A with TMT Insights COO Hannah Barnhardt and CEO Andy Shenkler

TMT Insights with:

COO Hannah Barnhardt and CEO Andy Shenkler

Q. Tell me about TMT Insights and how it got started.

Hannah Barnhardt: Andy and I started TMT Insights thinking we’d take on a few strategic professional services projects. Much to our surprise — and we’re grateful for it — the company has grown rapidly, and our client list today includes some of the most innovative global media brands.

We deal with all aspects of production and distribution workflows, helping clients in the M&E world streamline their existing processes or reimagine an entire end-to-end supply chain.  Our professional services include a mix of traditional consulting, CXO advisory services, and software development, while our core focus sits with architecting, building, and implementing complete media supply chains for streaming, fast channels, linear broadcast, and other distribution models. For some clients, we also provide outsourced DevOps, technical support, and vendor management, which includes managing the infrastructure for their backend platform and tech stack. To complement those services, we created Polaris, an operational management system that unifies and surfaces information from various subsystems behind a single pane of glass, giving users the visibility, they need to work collaboratively and efficiently across their cloud-enabled media supply chain.

Q. TMT Insights helps M&E companies prepare for what’s next. What’s your forecast for the industry?

Andy Shenkler: It's a pretty interesting time right now because we’re seeing many counterintuitive indicators. Disney now has more subscribers to their streaming services than Netflix. That’s an incredible growth rate over four years compared to the 10+ years it took Netflix to get to over 200 million subscribers. As that data emerges, we’re also seeing hiring freezes and layoffs across the industry. While there has been trepidation about the amount of money being spent on new content, there also has been an enormous push over the past two to three years, with COVID, toward globalization of content and an immense amount of original programming created across all these different platforms.

Everybody’s trying to figure out if these mixed signals indicate that we’re growing or we’re stalling. Because cash was cheap and everybody was in this massive “space race” for the streaming wars, the industry had access to an enormous amount of cash over the past several years. I think we're now going to see a response from the financial side of the world; companies will start to hedge and pull back. With some stunning decisions being made around content right now, we’re seeing seismic shifts in how companies are re-positioning themselves.

Q. How is TMT Insights positioned to guide M&E companies into the future?

Andy Shenkler: During changing times, you can’t simply take a lever and switch direction at the drop of a hat. I mean, you can, but it could have unintended consequences. That’s why the technology and operations teams within media organizations need to be able to respond to new challenges and opportunities as they arise. Our goal is to help them navigate those paths and remain nimble.

Because our team has a long history building and running enterprise media operations at scale, we’ve been through different cycles of change. We come to every project with a unique depth of experience and understanding, so we’re prepared to jump in and help without a learning curve. That’s why TMT Insights has been able to grow so quickly. As soon as we start talking with clients, they realize it will take just a couple of weeks of engagement, not months, for us to align on what they’re trying to do. In fact, the script often will flip, and they start to ask us if they’re heading the right direction. That’s a pretty unique position for our business to be in, given the fact that there is so much uncertainty about what’s coming next for the industry. But we’re really proud to have the right people, experience, knowledge, and solutions to deliver.

Q. Why did you decide to join IABM?

Andy Shenkler: The challenges of COVID drew everyone together because we were all thrown into the same chaos. In response to those shared challenges, the industry pulled together a strong fabric — a willingness to come together in joint problem-solving. It’s critical now to make sure we don't go back to a world in which everyone pursues only their own directions and interests, pulling that fabric apart.

Organizations such as IABM benefit the industry because they help to maintain a valuable commonality of conversation, a shared philosophy about working together to address whatever the future may hold. They help to preserve the fabric that holds the industry together and bring collective benefits to all businesses. We feel it’s important for us to be part of that effort and that community.

Hannah Barnhardt: IABM does an exceptional job of providing multiple outlets — from research to networking opportunities to events — to bring together different minds and perspectives on topics that are important to the industry. Whether it's finance, technical engineering operations, or any other aspect of the business, the organization plays a vital role in continuing the discussion, enabling collaboration, and fostering positive forward momentum, all in a transparent fashion.

Vimond – Imprisoned by Current Streaming Suppliers?

Author: Craig Bird

Senior Vice President of Product Management at Vimond

When will lock-in end? In the media world, it's sometimes hard to see a way out, or even a way forward, or to get even a sniff of change, when you have been running mission critical services for years with one supplier. This is as relevant for OTT services as it is for any other business. Broadcasters and content providers have built up audiences and viewership over years, developing complex ecosystems of infrastructure as technology has evolved.

The great user experience, the high-quality streamed video, personalisation, recommendation engines, ad integrations and other services are dependent on a series of integrations, customisations, in-house code and often legacy development from software engineers who have long since migrated on to pastures new.

The age-old joke about comments in the code that say “don't remove this line, we don't know what it does, but the whole system comes down without it” often has a ring of truth. When a software infrastructure and ecosystem has grown over a period of ten, fifteen (or even longer!) years, there are hidden routines and forgotten integrations, whole moving pieces for which nobody can remember what they do or why they are there...  (Trust me, I have spoken to some of these companies).

This situation can cause many problems. From the fear of changes causing downtime, to an inability to try new technologies, new integrations, and new suppliers leading to stagnation in development. Stagnation is not what you need in a fast-growing market where the competition is getting fiercer by the day. We don't need to suffer this in addition to the Content Wars. (More on that in our “10 tips on how to become (or stay) successful as a streaming service today” think piece).

It means that we can start to feel trapped with our current situation, or stuck with our existing supplier. Replacement of a CMS for OTT is often seen as a mammoth undertaking, requiring a rip and replace of an enormous part of your infrastructure and ecosystem. 

When your OTT Service relies on a Video CMS or OVP that is as critical a component to viewer facing services as the heart, brain or nervous system is to the human body, it can be tempting to accept your lot and resign yourself to the status quo:  “If it's not broken, don't fix it”. That is a difficult adage to live with when you need to stay at the forefront of technology and innovation by leveraging the most effective of services and suppliers in order to compete, win, retain and maintain audiences, with an ever reducing workforce (because everyone is under pressure to do more with less).  In addition, you need to put in an effort to increase revenue per viewer by driving engagement, helping audiences find content quicker than ever before and stay ahead of the competition. That is a hard situation to be in, when much of what you have is many years old technology, and the world is changing around you.

While early OTT services began based on on-premise servers in broadcasters´ own data centres, some have virtualised legacy workflows and components into the cloud.  Many end up tied-in, locked-down or stuck with one supplier at the core of their services, and some of the less scrupulous providers know it, using this knowledge to drive up prices year on year.

What compounds this unfortunate situation, is that the smart little upstarts and new market entrants are starting off on cloud native technologies, which gives them a distinct edge over lurking or lumbering behemoth giants of ecosystems that have grown so much over the years that they are now perceived as weak at the knees, with the possibility of relatively small changes bringing a collapse into black screens for viewers and frustrated audiences.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  The rip and replace of critical components does not have to risk the arterial flow of video entertainment to viewer screens. Just because one part of the infrastructure and ecosystem could use a refresh, it doesn't mean that the rest has to have one too.

Vimond has been through some of these journeys.  We have seen, and shared some of this pain with customers, old and new.  Vimond has been through a modernisation journey that some are struggling to get started on, or failing to make progress on.   Vimond VIA is a mature, stable, cheeky little upstart of a cloud-native OVP or Video CMS.  Vimond brings you the best of both worlds, longevity and youth, all in one go:  The wisdom of age combined with the springy elasticity and bounce of youth.

The Vimond VIA OTT platform, and the Vimond experts can help with your journey. There are several different approaches:

For companies setting up a new digital OTT service for viewers, you can launch the new service on Vimond VIA, without risking any existing channels or audiences.

For companies hoping to replace a long-standing CMS system, you can start to migrate to Vimond with the minimum of changes to the overall solution or ecosystem that you have.
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Why might this be easier than you might think?

Simple:  Vimond VIA is a cloud-native, automatically scaling CMS designed to facilitate the smooth running of OTT services (don't take my word for it, check out our think piece “automatic scaling, what on earth is that supposed to mean?). 

Vimond VIA is flexible, scalable, modular, and has APIs available for more functions than you can shake a stick at.

Vimond will not demand that you move or migrate your video assets or video pipeline.  Vimond VIA does not require all your video to be imported into the system.

Vimond VIA does not care where your media is, or which cloud provider (or premise) video is stored on.

Vimond will not insist that you change your authentication provider, your DRM or your apps partner.

The flexibility of Vimond VIA means that you can continue to use huge parts of your existing ecosystem or infrastructure, such as ad partners, video pipeline and transcoding partners, payment providers, video players, DRM providers, CDN, analytics.

These are all pieces of the puzzle that you might not want to move straight away, instead you can integrate them as is, and start trialling the power of Vimond VIA with a smaller project, piece by piece, (for instance by enabling the editorial team to manage and curate content - this is where the core strength of Vimond´s user-facing applications lie).

The other pieces you can move later, or not at all, if that is to your liking. Vimond VIA can help you from afar - a different cloud provider, a different country, and you´ll never know that we are not right next door.  This is a low risk approach to avoiding a big bang, starting with a new service, or just one service, and migrating over time, with the maximum of ease and the minimum of disruption.

Vimond have been in this game for a long time, with customers gained through reputation, rather than the weight of an enormous marketing budget.  We prefer the personal approach and we are one of the longest running and strongest providers in this marketplace. You wouldn't be the first provider to switch out one of the big-name suppliers, for some of the brightest minds currently working on OTT and IPTV, headquartered in Norway 🙂 

We help our customers to succeed, by being a company that does what we do, very well - working with broadcasters and content providers to create world class entertainment services.

ELEMENTS – How the software revolution is changing our industry

Author: ​Heiner Lesaar

CTO at ELEMENTS

Much has been written recently about the transformational shift in the media industry. Until recently, the only way to get the performance level we need – a new picture every 40ms – was to build special purpose hardware. Now, thanks to Moore’s Law, we can do pretty much everything we need on the same workstation hardware that banks and airlines and insurance companies use.

While we all celebrated about the way that this means technology is much more affordable, thereby democratising creativity and unleashing the potential for much more media on many more platforms, we must also acknowledge that it means a big change for the business models of vendor companies.

I see a lot of implications in this, but I want to talk about two in this article.

The first is the change in our supply chain, and perhaps even the fresh need for supply chain management. When broadcast products, whatever they were, ran on bespoke hardware designed by the vendors and either manufactured in house or by a sub-contractor, the skill was in forecasting how many of each unit to build each period.

Now we offer software products. These are largely self-developed because vendors in our industry are the subject specialists, but many will also include third-party software where the functionality is pretty standard.

Typically, the developers of these third-party packages, which might be databases, or file acceleration, or some other sub-system, will be dealing with multiple industries and may well regard the broadcast and media business as small and relatively insignificant. They almost certainly will not be swayed by our deadlines: they will probably not even have heard of IBC, let alone understand why it is so very important you can demonstrate your new release – which depends on the third-party new release. Managing the supply chain becomes a matter of managing expectations, both internally and with the end user.

The software has to run on standard hardware, and this is where the challenges can become even greater. Again, the difficulty is that the supply industry is dealing with huge numbers of sales of which our requirements are a tiny part. When supplies are short – and we are all aware of the component issues at the moment – then as a small cog in the IT gearbox we may be at the back of the queue.

Sometimes there are entirely unpredicted challenges. During the pandemic, for instance, there was a boom in crypto-currencies. We could discuss the reasons for this, but it would get us nowhere.

The effect of this crypto boom was a huge shortage of GPUs and hard drives, and a consequent big price rise. Our business is in large storage networks so we need a lot of drives, and this was a problem for us.

As a relatively small business, though, we can avoid bureaucracy in our purchasing, and if necessary we can work the phones to get what we need. If the CPUs or drives are not available here in Germany, then we can see what we could get in the UK or in Asia.

We are also able to talk to our customers, so they can help us help them. For example, one of our preferred network switches is from Arista, and at the moment they are quoting as much as 40 weeks for delivery for the right model.

By staying close to our customers, we can talk them through the situation. They may be able to find suitable switches on the second-hand market, and we can work with them to certify any potential purchases, and quickly amend our contracts to reflect the fact that they have sourced the router.

The ultimate goal is always to deliver on the end user’s requirements, but to do that we have to be flexible, and develop new business skills and principles.

My second point, and this is a great concern to me, is that, in what is now a software industry, it is becoming very hard to find talented developers and support engineers. This is an issue across the whole of the software industry and we are competing for skills. But the media sector is not helping itself: it must do more to attract talent.

I do not see this as being about money. It is a struggle for many businesses in our industry to find the right people. At ELEMENTS, we have recently opened a technology department in Belgrade, Serbia. It was a territory where we could readily identify suitable candidates, even though we have to train them ourselves in the specific requirements of the media industry.

As far back as 2014, the IABM held a conference on the industry’s skills shortages, and particularly the need to turn young people on to the excitement and potential of our industry. According to the official report of the conference, a leading broadcaster told the delegates “We have to go and face them with our challenges. Show them that we have real engineering issues. There is development to do and it is not a standardised development, so you can put your skills and talent into real projects.”

Successful businesses understand the importance of human capital. We have to find ways to attract and retain the best software talent. Is now the time for companies across the media industry to join forces and create an academy? We certainly see that there is room for that, and such an initiative would win our support.

State of MediaTech

This special report is based on exclusive research conducted by IABM before IBC 2022. It aims to provide a strategic analysis of the MediaTech industry in a data-driven fashion.

The main body of this report is divided into three sections:

  • The first section analyses macro trends affecting the MediaTech sector
  • The second explores the three major drivers of change in the industry identified by IABM in 2022.
  • The third analyses investment and adoption trends in MediaTech.

Each section is opened by an Executive Summary highlighting the major trends covered through text. The rest of the sections are mainly made up by visual slides.

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Cloud Economic Values

In this session, we interview Robert Amlung, ZDF’s Head of Digital, on the current and future economic value of cloud technology.