In Broadcast - CCW 2015 - 30


30

www.inbroadcast.com | CCW 2015 InShow Guide | 11-12 November

How A Software-Centric
Approach Can Modernise
Your Media Operations
Traditional broadcast facilities are struggling to
keep up with the changing industry...

R

eady or not, the media and
entertainment
industry
is
transforming. Content consumption
patterns are steadily shifting toward an
"anytime, any device" model, creating
a seemingly insatiable demand for
more content to fill more channels
for viewing, on a growing diversity of
platforms.
Media companies are scrambling
to keep pace. Traditional broadcast
facilities, based on specialised, singlepurpose hardware, are proving to
be too inflexible to cost-efficiently
meet today's demands. Rather than
continuing to rack and stack specialised
hardware to scale resources, media
companies are increasingly turning
toward software-centric solutions to
deliver the agility, scale, and elasticity
required to meet today's shifting
consumer demands, and to remain
relevant in an intensely competitive
environment.
"Moving to a software-centric,
or virtualised, operational model
is reinvigorating the productivity
and revenue-generating potential
of broadcasters around the world,"
says Steve Smith, CTO of Cloud at
Imagine Communications. "Severing
dependency on specialised hardware
frees up broadcasters to move
operations to generic, industrystandard computing resources, a
catalyst for introducing an array of
cost-savings and agility improving
benefits."
Among those benefits is operational
flexibility. Once functionality is
virtualised it becomes portable,
enabling media companies to adopt
an operational model that best
meets their current requirements
and eventual expansion plans. That
means that broadcasters can deploy
critical
functionality,
including
integrated playout, in a fully virtualised

environment, such as a private or
public cloud, or on premises-based
gear. Media organizations even
have the flexibility to maintain the
appliance-style
approach
that's
prevalent today, with the option of
seamlessly moving to a virtualised
environment in the future.
"Support for a hybrid operational
model," says Smith, "Provides
media companies with the ability
to immediately realise some of the
benefits of a software-based facility,
without stranding existing investments
or altering current operations. It allows
a pragmatic transition to next-gen
technologies, including IP and cloud."
Keeping Pace
Maintaining competitive standing in
today's evolving and hypercompetitive
media market requires broadcasters
and content providers to deliver
services faster, and more efficiently
than ever before. They must also
tear down longstanding barriers that
have blocked traditional broadcasters
from pursuing potentially lucrative
monetisation opportunities.
"By moving operations out of
dedicated
hardware
and
into
virtualised
environments,
media
companies
accomplish
those
objectives," says Smith, "Citing the
ability to quickly launch so-called
pop-up channels - short-term services
around special events that can be
launched and ripped down in a matter
of minutes - as an example of the
agility-bestowing power of a softwarebased infrastructure.
"A hardware-centric scenario forces
media companies to purchase and
provision dedicated hardware, a
capital-intensive and time-consuming
exercise. The same process in a
software-based model is nearly as
simple as pressing a button. Pursuing

Versio is built upon Imagine Communications' Zenium workflow management platform

Playout in the Cloud via Imagine Communications' Versio

an opportunity in a new geography
or one aimed at a relatively small
demographic, such as expats living
in large metropolitan settings, is
no longer cost prohibitive. Media
companies suddenly have more
freedom to fail, and much more space
in which to flex their creative muscles."
Beyond Theoretical
"The business-enhancing benefits
of transitioning to a software-centric
model are being proven in realworld settings," continued Smith.
Imagine Communications unveiled in
September that a large broadcaster
in the Middle East was deploying the
company's Versio integrated channel
playout solution in a private cloud
environment to provide business
continuity services. The completely
software-based and virtualised solution
currently shadows the broadcaster's
primary facilities, and is primed to
restore on-air activities in the event of
a disaster in an instant. The virtualised
disaster recovery site is also being
groomed to extend the broadcaster's
service coverage through the launch of
new channels, at a fraction of the cost
that would be required in a hardwaredependent environment.
In
April
of
2015,
Imagine
Communications announced that one
of the largest media and entertainment
companies in the world had adopted
Versio to move its channel origination
and playout operations, including
master control, into a virtualised
environment. The deployment has
been described by executives at

the broadcaster as essential to
the company's long-term goals of
modernising its operations, and
leveraging the benefits of a virtualised
environment, including unprecedented
agility and geo-diversity.
In addition to publicly announced
deployments, Smith says that Imagine
Communication is involved in dozens
of proof of concept engagements
around the world. "We have customers
deploying Versio on six continents."
The latest version of Versio is
100 percent software-based, and
malleable to any operational model
or architecture. "If you need to locate
functionality
on
premises-based
equipment,
private
datacenters,
the public cloud, or even dedicated
appliances, Versio can accommodate
your requirements. It's also adaptable
to any input/output scenario -
baseband, IP, or any combination of
the two."
Inside Versio
Versio, which brings video server,
branding,
master
control,
and
automation functionally into a fully
integrated solution, leads the industry
in its ability to transport high-bit rate
signals over IP networks, and support
compressed and uncompressed video
over IP signals (SMPTE 2022-6), entirely
in software. The solution is built upon
Imagine Communications' Zenium
workflow management platform, which
provides an agile software engine for
designing, deploying, and managing
extensible, customisable softwaredefined workflows.
For
more
information
about
Versio
and
additional
Imagine
Communications solutions, please visit
www.imaginecommunications.com
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.imaginecommunications.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD95jboYUwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD95jboYUwI http://www.imaginecommunications.com
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