T
he measure of any business is how well it can anticipate and ultimately serve the evolving needs of its customers. With television viewers now free to choose from a growing number of entertainment providers and consumption options, the resiliency and responsiveness of broadcasters and other traditional media businesses are being tested like never before. The same is true of the companies, like Imagine Communications, that supply technology to the media and entertainment industry. Indirectly impacted by the same shifts in consumer viewing habits, media technology companies are charged with anticipating the future requirements of our customers and assisting them in navigating from their present position to their ultimate destination at a pace that guarantees a turbulence-free transition. At Imagine, we refer to this laser-like focus on a precisely orchestrated transition scheme for our customers as practical innovation. Though the practice dates back several years, formulated at the same time as the company revealed its vision for a technology foundation based on software-defined workflows running on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment, it has taken on additional relevance in 2017. After years of wrestling with the why and when of transitioning to IP, media companies spent much of this year focusing on how to inject their operations with the needed agility to respond to current and future market demands without stranding investment or disrupting operations. Helping our customers sand off the rough edges of their next-generation roadmaps is essentially the value proposition behind practical innovation, which is defined by three overriding principals: DON’T FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY FOR TECHNOLOGY’S SAKE Innovation is not exclusive to what’s being cooked up in the labs. Some of the sharpest minds at Imagine apply their brainpower daily to solutions that are more to do with bridge building than ground-breaking. It’s the business case, not just technology, that drives innovation at Imagine. Our customers tell us where they need to make their businesses successful and we bend the technology to help them achieve their goals. What good is cutting-edge technology if it ends up severing the continuity in your network that’s needed to provide a smooth transition to the future? Our recent collaboration with Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) in the US to deliver children’s programming to its affiliates typifies the way we apply practical innovation. In this instance, Imagine worked closely with SBG to harness the power of Versio, a cloud-native playout solution
running in Microsoft Azure, to enable the broadcaster to achieve its business goals of distributing highly customised content and localised advertising, at a velocity and efficiency that significantly exceeded the capabilities of more traditional playout operations. SIMULTANEOUS SUPPORT FOR TRADITIONAL AND NEXT-GEN NETWORKS Rare will be the infrastructure that is not at some point simultaneously in the SDI and IP domains. Hybrid infrastructures will likely remain standard operating procedure for broadcast engineers for at least the remainder of the decade. Helping media companies build out an archipelago of IP installations within a sea of SDI, and then gradually turning that island chain into a contiguous mass, is at the top of the practical innovation job description. Imagine’s flagship router, the Platinum IP3, was built to enable media companies to transition from SDI to IP at a comfortable pace and without missing a single market opportunity. Built-in support in the IP3 for uncompressed IP provides studio and mobile production facilities with the ability to straddle the SDI and IP domains for as long as necessary. And the Magellan SDN Orchestrator, the industry’s only hybrid control system, allows operators to manage their networks the same way they always have, as they make the SDI to IP transition. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO EVOLVE WORKFLOWS Incorporating the latest standards, technology breakthroughs and practices into your workflows, futureproofing your company against falling behind the innovation curve, should be as friction-free as possible. A principal component of our practical innovation strategy is the adoption of a true microservices-based architecture, which provides the foundation for Imagine’s next-gen solutions. By building workflows using discrete components, or business functions, which can be updated or replaced without disrupting operations, media companies are best positioned to take up permanent residency on the cutting edge of the technology curve. But more importantly, a cloud-native, microservices architecture gives media companies the ability to evolve their businesses in small, incremental steps, rather than forcing them into wholesale changes that sever continuity with current operations. Our customers consistently look to us to infuse their workflows with a steady stream of technology, developed in house or in cooperation with our technology partners, that brings them closer to achieving their business goals, one step at a time. That’s practical innovation in action. Look for it to become even more of a factor in 2018. n
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