In Broadcast - In Show Guide 2016 - 28


28

www.inbroadcast.com | IBC2016 InShow Guide | 9-13 September

Metadata and Micro-services
By Paul Wilkins, Director of Solutions
and Marketing, TMD

W

here once an asset management
system provided indexing,
location and research tools, now it
is the heart of a software-defined
architecture, driven extensively by
automated workflows.
It still collects, collates and curates
metadata. But now the metadata
scheme is vast to drive large-scale
workflow automation. Even if some of
the information is held in physically
separate systems - like rights
management - then to the user and to
the workflow designer it has to appear
as the same logical device.
To accomplish this, smart developers
are re-engineering the functionality
using modern techniques. The IT
world has recognised that to develop
rich functionality it must be broken
down into small elements. Developers
talk in terms of micro-services and
containers. At TMD we call our
implementation of a micro-services
architecture UMS - Unified Media

Services. Data is passed between
micro-services in a standardised form.
It means that each micro-service is
complete and self-contained. Should
anything fail in one micro-service it
has no impact on any other, so the
whole platform becomes much more
resilient. It is also readily scalable
because micro-services are spun up as
required.
We configure any number of microservices into task blocks, and allow
our users to define their workflows
by connecting task blocks together in
the correct sequence using a design
tool we call Composer, running on the
Orchestrator workflow engine.
This also makes it easy for third
parties to add their own functionality.
Either they develop their own apps
for the UMS platform, or they provide
their API to allow TMD to develop the
service.
UMS brings two more significant
benefits.

TMD's Unified
Media Services

First, it allows you to drop in
precisely the functionality that you
need. We have used it to create a
number of media service applications
that all run on the UMS platform.
This allows us to offer entry-level
systems which are effectively subsets
of the functionality, aimed at specific
groups of users. So we have, for
example, OnPoint, a production asset
management tool for creative services
and Paragon as a dedicated archive
system, which takes the ability to
migrate content from nearline to

archive, using any storage solution.
Second,
the
micro-services
structure
of
Mediaflex-UMS
is
central to virtualisation and cloud
implementation. Specific services
can be spooled up as needed,
giving the best possible utilisation
of the hardware, under softwaredefined control. A service-oriented
architecture like Mediaflex-UMS can
be fully virtualised, so it can run on
premises, in a data centre or in the
cloud, or in any combination of all
three that suits the user.
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