As ORS Group celebrates its 20th anniversary, the Austrian broadcast services provider has announced a partnership agreement with Insys Video Technologies under the single, unified brand, Big Blue Marble.
The strategic move follows a longstanding collaboration between the two companies, which has combined ORS’s experience in the broadcast arena with the OTT and streaming capabilities of Insys since 2016. Two years ago, ORS became a shareholder in Insys, deepening the relationship and enabling further integration between them.
Describing himself as one of the “founding fathers” of ORS Group, CEO, Michael Wagenhofer has been with the company since its formation. Explaining the growth trajectory that has led to the announcement, he tells TVBEurope: “We joined forces because we share this global vision. We think we have the ability and the capability to act globally while still maintaining a strong local impact. Streaming and cloud services mean that you have to scale internationally and that’s our ambition for the future – we want to actively shape the media landscape.”
Aiming to meet the needs of a growing portfolio that includes public broadcasters and large sports organisations, Big Blue Marble will continue to take a collaborative approach to its customer engagements, leveraging IP-based technologies to provide scalability across a rapidly-evolving market. The company is a key AWS partner for media and entertainment verticals, specialising in the provision of AWS-based OTT solutions.
“At Insys, we also have almost 20 years experience in adopting [the] latest technologies,” adds Krzysztof Bartkowski co-CEO and co-founder of Insys Video Technologies. “We were early adopters of adaptive streaming, mainly delivered by Microsoft. We were also front runners in terms of adoption of content protection. So we were first adopters of Microsoft, play ready DRM in the region, and basically we were always focusing on trying to deliver the best possible experience and with with content protection for premium content.
“When we started close cooperation with ORS, we better understood the requirements of a traditional broadcaster – the processes, but also the needs for all the layers of additional reliability and redundancy. And that’s how we came up with the concept of actually having the broadcast and streaming in the IP world. So, a marriage of the two worlds. And that’s that’s basically our core message now that we’re really getting the highest possible quality, quality of service, quality of of image and quality of content protection.”
Wagenhofer believes Blue Marble’s offering makes it unique in the European arena, likening its structural combination of technical expertise with ownership of broadcast and streaming platforms to Comcast with Peacock.
Illustrating the flexibility the business is able to offer, he highlights the lessons learned in covering Austria’s national sport, skiing, in which audiences would ramp up exponentially within seconds to follow a particular competitor. “This really created a lot of pressure in the system, and we had a lot of disruptions in the past, 10 years ago. We learned from that the hard way. I think we really have a super resilient solution now, which is scalable and dynamically changes. Our sweet spot is definitely when there is a large audience joining a live stream. This, I think, is at the core of what we understand by broadcast – great streaming.”
The company is pioneering technology which allows it to use its high power, high tower masts in the streaming ecosystem. Ultimately, Wagenhofer thinks there will be an all IP system and feels there is still value in equipping the transmitters with 5G broadcast technology. Work is underway to align efforts with European partners. “I think we are currently so on the edge of success, because there’s still the end user devices missing,” says Wagenhofer, explaining the inevitable gap between broadcast innovation and device manufacturers. “But I assume that we will see the breakthrough in the next three years, and this is another example of what we mean by broadcast, great streaming technology using the resilience of directional networks for the streaming ecosystem.”
In addition to delivering terrestrial, cable and satellite TV across the DACH region (German, Austria and Switzerland), Big Blue Marble will offer the following solutions across international markets:
- InsysGO – Modular, cloud-native OTT platform built on AWS services
- Cloud Video Kit – Modular, cloud-based tools for video processing and delivery
- Cloud Digital Rights Management – Multi-DRM protection across all devices
- Professional Services – A dedicated team of AWS-certified engineers and streaming experts for custom media workflows
A wide and diverse range of use cases will be supported, including regional TV-as-a-Service provision, end-to-end OTT TV for broadcasters, cable operators, telcos and ISPs, VoD platforms and live and on-demand sports and event streaming.
Choosing a name for the new organisation was an interesting process, and the result of an active choice to avoid a name that sounded too technical. “We wanted to really differentiate ourselves, we wanted to stand out,” says Wagenhofer. One of the team saw an iconic image of the Earth captured by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972, named the Big Blue Marble. It was an oxymoron they could relate to, both big and small at the same time.
“What could better symbolise our global ambition than the Earth itself. And at the same time, of course, we are aware we are not the biggest company in the world so we want to stay humble. We want to stay approachable.”
