Our industry is embarking on an unprecedented era of transformative change fueled by IPTV, mobility, social networking, personal profiling and consolidation. The competitive landscape will ultimately deliver an enhanced consumer experience with higher resolution video (UHD+), convenience (TV Everywhere) and improved economics (IP, Software and Cloud).
The media broadcast industry is at a pivotal inflection point where today’s legacy ‘proprietary premise-based hardware’ technologies are yielding to next generation IP-enabled, software defined and cloud virtualised technologies. Content creators, broadcasters and distributors recognise the need and value proposition of such change – the challenge is getting from here to there, which is also the opportunity.
I joined today’s Imagine Communications and GatesAir (formally Harris Broadcast) a year ago 8 July, after spending 25 years in the IT/MSO/Telecom market segment. While I paraphrase that the media broadcast industry is a decade behind the technology curve, it arguably is.
For the IT/MSO/Telco industry, the transformation from legacy ‘proprietary premise-based hardware’ technologies to IP-enabled, software-defined and cloud-virtualised technologies began in the mid to late 1990s.
Today’s technology advancements have created catalysts for new applications, new revenue, reduced cost and accelerated growth. Our mission at Imagine Communication is to provide the products, solutions and services to migrate our customers from ‘here to there.’
Today’s CTO and CIO are laser focused on the ‘network of the future’ and the technologies and supplier partners to help them get there. Online, mobility and social networking will continue to influence consumer spending. Today’s IP-enabled broadband network is fueling competition and promoting innovation.
Today, mobile data traffic is eight times the size of the entire global internet back in 2000. Video will represent 70% of all internet traffic by 2016 and if that is not enough reason to focus on the network of the future, there is already an equal number of mobile devises as the world’s population… video, video video.
At Imagine Communications and GatesAir, we are innovating across these key technology areas and we are designing our solutions to support an ecosystem friendly environment with recently announced technology frameworks (MediaCentral, Playout-in-the-Cloud, Software Defined Workflows) and Over-the-Air mobile solutions all of which will be demonstrated and focus areas for Imagine Communications and GatesAir at IBC2014.
IP, Software-Defined Workflows and the Cloud are game changing technologies and network topologies for our customers. These technologies and deployment strategies create network flexibility, new application adaptation and new business models that do not exist today. Migrating sales and business management tools, content, playout and video compression functionality to the cloud fundamentally changes how networks will be designed and monetised going forward.
Imagine Communications has the most comprehensive and complete media software and video infrastructure portfolio and GatesAir has the most compelling next generation radio and TV high-efficient over-the-air solutions. Come see us at IBC2014 at stand 7.G20 (Imagine Communications) and 8.B10 (GatesAir).
