Content marketing Rohde & Schwarz
There’s a perfect storm brewing. Numerous forecasts point
toward the rapid growth of video, driven by demand for video over mobile often
in tandem with breathless predictions for the rollout of 5G, the next
generation wireless broadband. The choice for media companies is to build the
physical infrastructure to cope, or go to the cloud.
Cisco’s latest Video Networking Index, for example, suggests
video will make up 82% of all IP traffic in just three years’ time. Ericsson’s
recent Mobility Report predicts mobile video will grow 35% annually through
2024 to comprise 60% of all mobile data.
Equally important is that viewers no longer distinguish
between content accessible by TV or OTT regardless of screen. With more video
traversing online networks than ever before, viewer expectations of quality is
set to become as much a major headache for service providers and content
providers as the relevance of personalized content and individual user
experiences.
There’s money to be made if media organisations and service
providers can capitalise on this clear trend, but to do so they need to rip and
replace their approach (let alone the hardware) to production and delivery
infrastructure.
Put simply, traditional approaches to video processing and
delivery cannot keep pace with the changing nature of video consumption and the
rising expectations that flow from it.
The new digital methodology requires retooling
infrastructure, business models and, importantly, internal engineering culture
for the more operationally agile software-first environment of the cloud.
Playout may have evolved less quickly to the cloud than
other areas of the business, since channels requirements are more predictable
over longer periods than the bursty nature of processes like postproduction.
What broadcasters want is the ability to launch new channels
quickly – such as a temporary channel around a quadrennial sports event - and
to adapt services for existing ones to target different audiences or regions
for a short period of time.
That isn’t possible with a traditional playout model reliant
on single-purpose machines which need purchasing and installing many months in
advance.
The functions for channel deployment from video servers to
compliance recorders have been discrete appliances taking up (heating, cooling,
real estate) space in racks. These tools are being re-tuned by vendors across
the piece to work on commodity storage and compute systems using standard IP/IT
protocols to interoperate with each other at a micro-services level.
As more and more elements of the chain from automation to
graphics, logo insertion and transcoding become virtualized, the potential for
pop-up or localized or trial channels and even just-in-time broadcasting come
closer to being realised.
The trick – and it’s by no means an easy feat – is to bring
broadcast-grade capabilities into the cloud at a rental or pay-as-you-go price
with no upfront expenditure. A successful transition will enable video
providers to tap into a number of opportunities to improve the performance, efficiency,
and costs of their video workflows.
In this context we need to see the Rohde & Schwarz
acquisition of Pixel Power. Its software-based IP solutions enable dynamic
content to be delivered more efficiently for linear TV, mobile, online and
OTT/VOD. Its solutions are virtualizable for either private or public cloud and
deliver on the new OPEX business models which are core to the broadcast
technology transformation.
A perfect solution for a perfect storm? The market will
decide.
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