In Broadcast - August 2017 - 68

68

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 7 - Issue 8 | August 2017

InMedia

Broadcast Management Systems cont'd...

Arvato's
BMS Avatega

Avatega, Arvato's BMS product, is
available as either an on-premise or
IaaS deployment and will also soon
be available as a self-service SaaS
offering. "We will continue to offer our
clients the choice of all three such that
they can select the deployment model
that best suits their business need,"
says Davenport.
For IBC Arvato will demonstrate
the latest Cloud-based deployment
of Avatega, and the burgeoning
ecosystem around BMS. "This is really
enabling efficiencies in responding to
consumer trends - for example, close
integration to MAM, OTT toolkits and
marketing platforms," says Davenport.
Appropriate Move
Marc Risby at reseller and
integrator Boxer Systems suggests
customers are looking to move to an
'appropriate Cloud'. "It's not just a
case of throwing functions into the
public Cloud, it's about finding what
works specifically for what you want
to do. You might be more flexible, but
unless you know precisely why, what,
and for how long you're doing it, it's
not going to help unless you ensure
that it's perfectly aligned with what
you want to achieve with your business
model."
Risby says Boxer is seeing a lot of
interest in more flexible licensing
models for products - something that
allows the customer to dynamically
choose where the process happens so
the location and type of physical tin
is less important. "The customer can
choose where they host applications so
they can assign jobs wherever it suits
them most, be it locally, in a private
Cloud, in a public Cloud, in a different
office. Whatever makes sense for them
for resource allocation, or even DR
[Disaster Recovery]."
In April, Boxer's long-term partner
Telestream showed an enterpriselevel virtualised license concept for
transcoding and workflow that enables
a great deal of this.

Managing Technology
BroadView
Software
believes
the fundamental issue is that
broadcasters, and especially their IT
infrastructure teams, no longer want
to manage technology, regardless
of where it is. "Fundamentally,
users don't care what technology is
delivered, they just want software that
works for them to their job," contends
Michael Atkin, Founding Partner and
President.

BroadView has an asset-centric approach

"We've focused on the infrastructure
it takes to run a broadcast
management solution and figured out
how to deploy it in a virtual, Cloudbased world," explains Atkin. "This
has taken significant investment in
qualifying virtual server technologies
with our application suite as well
as Cloud resources and delivery
mechanisms. We're proud to be fully
qualified on Amazon's EC2 Cloud
infrastructure.
"The second aspect is the users.
IT desires a 'zero install' footprint,
one that doesn't rely on Citrix or
RDS services. BroadView has been
investing in HTML5 technologies and
approaches that, when complete, will
require no client installation and no
special security credentials for client
operations. With this two-pronged
approach we can deliver on IT's desire
to manage little or no equipment or
user desktops while still delivering
a best-of-breed solution with the

functionality users desire."
The firm has been focusing recently
on the release and rollout of its version
8 product, the European release of
which will occur at IBC. This tool has
many, many product enhancements
as well as usability and efficiency
improvements and new modules
which can radically change how users
do their jobs (for the better). The
focus at IBC will be discussing the
"Asset Centric" model with improved
OnDemand tools, analytics and the
new promo campaign management
tool.
Capable Strategies
It has been over four years since
Imagine Communications committed
to an all IP and software-defined
strategy to enable datacentre and
Cloud capabilities. Since then the
company's entire product portfolio
has
undergone
a
significant
transformation to either become Cloud
native or a hybrid gateway
that combines the traditional
and
new
operating
environments. Every aspect
of the workflow and the
supporting technologies
are touched by this
transformation
from
ingest
and
media
processing
capabilities
through to sales, planning,
billing and distribution.
At NAB, it introduced
the Open Zenium initiative and
plans to unveil new developments
to this program around IBC. With
Open Zenium Imagine has opened
up access to its microservices library
source code. Customers and partners
of the initiative can provide other
media companies with the ability to
customise, modify, design and deploy
workflows and services on COTS
equipment for what Steve Smith, CTO
Cloud, Imagine Communications, says

delivers unparalleled speed, reliability
and flexibility.
Net Insight says transmission
service providers can "significantly
enhance revenue and penetrate
wider audiences" by deploying its
customer self-provisioning platform,
consisting of ScheduALL Connector
and ScheduALL Portal.
"Connector gives broadcasters realtime inventory visibility and booking
capability with their satellite providers
and terrestrial networks, from
directly inside their own ScheduALL
systems," it says. "Portal's webbased interface allows customers to
make bookings online directly into
providers' ScheduALL system. Even
more cost savings can be realised with
ScheduALL's Chorus interoperability
platform, which automatically triggers
communication to third-party control
systems. This allows for 'scheduleonce' efficiency, automating the entire
process from booking to completion."
Sony's Media Backbone Hive is a
Cloud-native system boasting open
APIs and various customisation
capabilities. "Importantly, it makes
it quicker and easier for journalists,
editors and producers to collaborate,
regardless of where they are in the
world," explains Stuart Almond, head
of marcoms for Sony's media solutions.
"We showed an integration of XDCAM
Air and Hive as a fully deployed Cloudhosted service at NAB this year, and
will do so again at IBC. The integration
is designed to extend the capability of
acquisition into production workflows.
Our partnership with Swisscom also
demonstrates our virtual switcher
based out of the Cloud, enabling
'on-demand' production streaming
services."
Sony's US arm acquired broadcast
automation
software
developer
Crispin Corporation in April and it will
be offered as a turnkey source for
content distribution and management
mainly focused on customers in North
America.

Sony Media
Backbone
Hive ingest
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.arvato.com/uk/industries/media-and-entertainment.html http://www.broadviewsoftware.com/ https://www.sony.co.uk/pro/press/pr-sony-introduces-media-backbone-hive
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