In Broadcast - January 2016 - 58


58

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 6 - Issue 1 | January 2016

InTech

AIMS Targets Broad
Industry Support
A new alliance is focused on ensuring an open
standard for media IP workflows is adopted...

A

group of broadcast and media
industry suppliers including Grass
Valley, Imagine Communications,
Lawo, Nevion, and Snell Advanced
Media have collaborated to form the
Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS).
This new, independent trade
association's mandate is to bring IP
solutions to market that offer complete
interoperability, are based on open
standards, and integrate seamlessly
into media workflow environments
to foster industry innovation and
efficiency.
The group's efforts will be
focused on promoting the adoption,
standardisation, development and
refinement of open protocols for
media over IP, with an initial emphasis
on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 20226 and AES67.
As broadcasters and other media
companies look to use IP workflows to
speed and streamline the movement
and management of increasingly
complex content, and adapt their
businesses to better compete with
other content options such as overthe-top (OTT), open standards
are the key to protecting current
investments and ensuring long-term
interoperability.
Specifically, AIMS will prioritise three
key strategies:
*	 Initiatives that facilitate the
education and adoption of open
standards;
*	 Facilitation of activities that
accelerate the development of
solutions that support these open
standards;
*	 Nurturing the creation of new
standards by supporting standards
bodies with participation and testing in
real-world environments.
"The mission of the Alliance for IP Media Solutions is to endorse open
standards and protect the
choice that broadcasters and media
companies must have when selecting
the right solution for their particular
needs," says Steve Reynolds, CTO,
Imagine Communications and AIMS
interim Director.

Mike Cronk, Senior Vice
President of Strategic
Marketing, Grass Valley,
and
AIMS
interim
Director, adds: "Our intent is to avoid
perpetuating a future where suppliers
push their proprietary technologies
only to lock media companies into
technologies that don't work well with
other systems or are not easily scaled
and upgraded."
Andreas
Hilmer,
Director of Marketing &
Communications
with
Lawo and AIMS interim
Director, says: "AIMS's support
of open standards and technical
recommendations such as TR-03, TR04 and AES67 afford us an opportunity
to eliminate the fragmentation of
implementations that our industry has
endured over the last 20 years - our
chance to avoid repeating expensive
and time-consuming mistakes of the
past."
Open standards work for the IP
transition is already underway by
the 74-member Video Services
Forum (VSF), with the support of
organisations such as SMPTE and
the EBU. AIMS endorses the work
of the VSF and will continue to lend
support in the development of a
standard approach to IP. More than 30
broadcast equipment manufacturers
are actively testing and validating the
VSF's approach.
"The rate of change
in broadcast and media
is
unprecedented,
so
it is critical that the
industry rapidly aligns with open
standards to the benefit of all -
from suppliers to end users," says
Brad Gilmer, Executive Director of
VSF. "The approach that AIMS is
endorsing is already enjoying broad
industry support and is well suited
to the industry's future, providing
IP's enhanced flexibility and cost
efficiencies by leveraging the huge
investments being made in off-theshelf IT technology."

Interoperable media IP workflows

AIMS provides specific guidance in
its bylaws to its members and to the
media industry via the AIMS Roadmap.
The organisation endorses an IP
transition plan that includes support
for SMPTE 2022-6, AES67 and VSF
recommendations TR-03 and TR-04.
"The
foundation
of
AIMS is the pursuit and
acceleration
of
open
standards aligned with the
media and entertainment industry,"
said Charlie Vogt, CEO, Imagine
Communications. "The transition to IP,
SDN and cloud solutions is essential
for our clients to create, move,
manage and monetise video content
in the most efficient, flexible and agile
manner. Without AIMS, the industry
would be required to adopt proprietary
approaches that hinder innovation,
reduce deployment flexibility and paint
broadcasters into a single-vendor
corner that isolates them from the
economic and performance benefits of
an open ecosystem and marketplace."
"Nevion
has
always
championed
the
adoption of standards,
and we believe this is
the ideal time to start on the path
to standardising IP in broadcast,"
says Geir Bryn-Jensen, CEO, Nevion.
"Broadcasters are realising the
benefits that IP workflows can bring
to their operations in terms of costefficiency and flexibility, and as the
transition to IP continues and more
organisations adopt IP across multiple
areas, we need to ensure long-term

sustainability and this is precisely
where standards and interoperability
become crucial."
Tim Thorsteinson, CEO
of Snell Advanced Media
(SAM) adds: "In this transition to IP, we need one set
of standards that become as ubiquitous as SDI. SAM is throwing its weight
behind AIMS because it supports the
only set of standards for IP that have
been collaboratively developed, and
that meet the needs of future business
models."
AIMS members are also collaborating
with many leading computing and
networking leaders, including Arista,
Brocade, Cisco, Hewlett Packard
Enterprise, IBM and Microsoft, to
advance new, open standards-based
IP technologies in the IT industry
for video production and playout
environments.
A number of solutions are already on
the market to help media companies
begin the transition by introducing IP
components to an SDI workflow.
The
transition
represents
a
significant investment and will not
happen overnight.
An open standards approach allows
media companies to implement the
technology over time and transition
at the pace that makes sense for their
businesses.
Membership in AIMS is available to
all individuals and companies that
support open standards and share a
commitment to the group's founding
principles.
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