BCA Show Daily - Day 2 - 4

4

SUNTEC SINGAPORE

A part of

MARINA BAY SANDS * SUNTEC SINGAPORE

Show Daily | Wednesday 27 June 2018

What Are Microservices?
We have been talking about IP connectivity and software-defined architectures
for quite a while and we have pretty much got our heads around those ideas,
says Stan Moote, CTO, The IABM...

N

ow people have started talking about
microservices. What are they, and why
should we care?
I asked Steve Reynolds, President
Playout & Networking Solutions at Imagine
Communications, who explained: "If we
go back just a few years, when you needed
something in your machine room, you went
to a vendor and bought a box that did it. But
because that box had to be appealing to a lot
of users, the chances are that it did quite a
few things, only some of which you might
need. Or it might not quite meet the need, so
you had to live with the limitations. That was
the way that hardware devices had to be built.
"But in a software-defined architecture,
we can break the functionality down into
very small modules, so you can implement
precisely the functionality that you need no more and no less. Those small pieces
of software are microservices," Reynolds
added.

Microservices Architecture
Taking a real-world example, say you
wanted a transcoder. In a traditional,
bespoke hardware broadcast architecture,
your preferred supplier might offer you a
transcoder that included inputs for MPEG-2,
H.264 and JPEG2000.
It would include a de-interlacer. And it
would include output codecs like H.265, AV1
and more. You could transcode pretty much
anything to anything.
But what if you needed it for a specific
task? Say you want a device that takes
in progressive JPEG2000 and outputs it
as H.265, so a de-interlacer isn't needed.
Nor are the other input and output codecs
required - but ultimately you ended up having
to pay for them.
These extra functions are most likely
running all the time, consuming power and
generating heat that has to be taken away by
the machine room air conditioning.

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Fig. 1. - Microservices:
"you can implement precisely the functionality
that you need - no more and no less,"
Steve Reynolds, Imagine Communications

Now with a microservices architecture
(Fig. 1.), you simply call up the software
applications for JPEG2000 in and H.265 out.
Exactly what you need. Further, you only use
the processor resources for that functionality
in a virtualised environment - microservices
are critical to virtualisation.
What happens when someone says: "We
can only get this feed as an H.264 stream"?
You spin up the H.264 input codec, when and only when - you need it.
What happens when someone comes along
and says: "We would love to offer a 4K Ultra
HD trial service"? It might happen for this
year's FIFA World Cup, for example. Then
you add the microservices that handle UHD:
you can be delivering it in the time it takes to
download a very compact piece of software.

Flexibility and Cost-Efficiency
Within our industry, mostly everyone has a
few extremely specific workflows, something
that is critical to their business yet no one else
needs it. With a microservices framework you
can develop your own microservice or get
someone to develop it for you. Remember
that it is a small piece of software, so this
is not going to be a big task. And here is
the most exciting part about microservices:
because it is self-contained, it is not going to
break anything else in the workflow.
"Flexibility in designing workflows to do
exactly what you want is the key benefit
of microservices," Reynolds said. "At
Imagine, we have developed a microservices
framework called Zenium which allows other

vendors to contribute microservices to the
market and allows end-users to create their
own custom code.
"It makes no difference who develops the
microservice," Reynolds added. "It's just
another resource available to the workflow
designer, that you can include if it provides the
functionality you need."
From an operations point of view, you will
quickly see flexibility is a key benefit; from the
CFO point of view, cost-efficiency. Vendors
can bring their own business models to
microservices, offering you the flexibility to
buy something outright or license it by the
number of instances and the time it is running.
So, if you need a 3D character generator for
an hour a day, find someone who will license
you a graphics microservice by the hour. The
same goes for a cloud instance - you only pay
for the processing time you need. Now you
have an infrastructure where the cost of the
technology is directly linked to the output, and
therefore to the revenue.

Microservices at BroadcastAsia
While at BroadcastAsia, be sure to learn
about microservices - ask questions and you
will quickly appreciate that a microservices
architecture is the way of the future.
www.theiabm.org
Stan Moote has worked worldwide in the
industry for over three decades and is the CTO
for IABM, International Association for Broadcast
and Media Technology Suppliers. Stan has a
clear understanding of technology combined
with a solid business twist. You can see many of
Stan's articles at theIABM.org.
http://www.theiabm.org https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUsTvrLiWZgue1SFZAbAzR_XOqaga-8dy http://www.theiabm.org http://www.theiabm.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BCA Show Daily - Day 2
