Media supply chain and metadata management solutions company Fabric has announced a merger with media resource company Xytech to “redefine how media organisations manage, distribute, and monetise their content”.
The new entity, which for the moment will be known as Fabric x Xytech, will integrate both companies’ technologies to deliver innovation and efficiencies to media organisations in producing, managing, and distributing their content.
Speaking exclusively to TVBEurope, Rob Delf, formerly CEO of Fabric and now CEO of the new entity, says it will bring together Fabric’s “cloud-native technology stack and principles to design and engineering with Xytech’s incredible knowledge of a niche area in the industry”.
“To me, that is a really big opportunity to move the needle forward and be more technology-focused so the architects of the supply chains are saying Xytech will work for us for the future, while at the same time preserving this very specific functionality that the industry’s relied on for 30 years. That’s the purpose of the merger.”
Delf says that his role as CEO will be to ensure the new entity is building what its customers want, in terms of both a technical footprint and functionality, and ensuring that the two sides of the company are “driving together” towards that goal.
Among his plans is to establish what Delf calls an enterprise customer hearing committee that will talk openly about the challenges customers are facing. “My job here is really to be an advocate for the consumers of our products, internally in the company, and orienting us to be customer-faced.”
Xytech’s current CEO, John O’Connor has been appointed chief operating officer of the new entity, and there are no plans for “reductions” in staff.
Asked how he views the next 12 months for the company, Delf says he envisions three phases; educate, analyse and action.
“The next three months will be in the educate and analyse phase, where I want to talk to every customer that Xytech has, and every Fabric customer, and watch every single demo, and from that build a roadmap and then execute it as fast as we can,” he continues. “So we’ll be bringing in the resources where we need to execute on the roadmap.
“We want to build up excitement that this thing [Xytech’s technology] that seemingly everyone uses, has a future, and has an exciting future. So that’s really the biggest thing in the next 12 months, is that roadmap plus movement on our first steps towards that.”
Both Xytech and Fabric will have separate stands at IBC, but will take customer meetings together as one company at both locations, Delf reveals.
