5 Key Industry Trends at IBC 2019

This year’s IBC Show has wrapped up after five intense days of disruptive discussions, and we have seen some key trends driving change across the value chain:

• The future is cloud – cloud-based technologies are driving change across the value chain, boosting the shift to IP and the development of Remote Production
• Content is still king – and the need for personalization is driving the rise of new interactive formats
• The quest for monetization – research for new monetization strategies makes data-driven business intelligence a necessity

The Future is Cloud

Cloud is the future, and it’s proving to be a major driver spanning across the value chain. Cloud-based services are everywhere, with the promise of helping media companies to reduce time to market for services and live feeds while offering elastic and robust infrastructure – making it easier to produce and distribute higher volumes of content cost-efficiently and effectively. But as organizations embark on their business transformation journey, they need to understand how to navigate in this cloud complexity, what framework to choose between on-prem, hybrid, or multi-cloud, how to use data to power business decisions. This is why Nimbra Edge was developed as a secure, interoperable and easy to use cloud transport solution, made to scale and deliver professional live media workflows such as primary distribution and interconnect services. Read more about it here.

The shift to IP

The shift to IP remains a steady trend, with the arrival of open solutions for IP. Adoption is growing gradually, even for live production. The move into IP-based workflows makes for greater interoperability, with the goal of getting essence streams to move between studios faster and easier, and to have flexible and simpler operations and production workflows. At the show we saw a growing interest around open standards and the need for more interoperability – many approached us to understand our involvement in RIST and other standards like SRT, Zixi and SMPTE ST 2110.These standards are designed to support separate video, audio and data for live production and other professional media applications. In addition, our Nimbra open source portfolio strategy was highlighted as we are partnering with key players such as AWS or Microsoft Azure. Read more about our contributions here.

Remote Production

Remote Production is also strictly connected with the development of cloud-based technology, and was a central theme at the show. Driven by virtualization and the shift to IP, Remote Production, At-home or REMI is being largely adopted as it puts the focus on efficient production at low cost with ease of use and personalization for omni-channel distribution. It was inspiring to witness its wide appeal at the show and hear partners such as Grass Valley and customers buzzing about the advantages it brings. As members of the Grass Valley Tech Alliance, we showcased the remote production capabilities of our Nimbra transport solutions at the Grass Valley booth. Many also stopped by our booth to discuss Remote Production and its future with our experts. Looking forward, the future of remote production relies on collaboration and partnerships across the entire media value chain and new access to network technologies such as 5G. Learn more about Remote Production and how to do more with less here, or watch our video case study on how we achieved the world’s largest Remote Production setup with SVT for the Åre Alpine World Championships 2019.

Content Personalization

Content personalization is also a big driver in most media tech sectors. Streaming in particular sees a lot of activity, as demonstrated by the latest events in the “streaming wars” – the upcoming launch of the Disney-owned online streaming service Disney+ among others – and reflected in the bustling activity of Hall 14 at the show. Low latency continues to be the hottest buzzword, with the industry still struggling to solve it at scale without sacrificing quality, but the focus on interactivity is driving the rise of new formats. Immersive media experiences, which started out with interactive trivia shows, are expanding, with even players like Tinder coming into the space with their own interactive content. We can see e-Sports and gaming content being at the forefront as the fastest growing sector, expected to grow to a $3 billion market by 2022, and going hand in hand with user-generated content formats. We showcased our low-latency streaming solution Sye’s interactive functionalities at the show, with an e-Sports themed demo which displayed perfectly synchronized, multi-view 4K gameplay and player cams, together with synchronized mouse movements and keyboard strokes overlays. This allows every viewer to swipe and combine angles and type of content, creating the ultimate tailor-made streaming experience. Read more about how to achieve a low-latency, better-than-broadcast streaming experience here.

Monetization Strategies

Monetization strategies become more and more complex in a crowded market and with the ongoing shift in consumer behavior. In today’s competitive business environment, data is gold, and every enterprise needs to turn their data into comprehensive actionable intelligence that can be easily understood and monetized. Understanding specific business drivers and how they can be dynamically optimized by leveraging KPIs is the key to every organization’s success, and the wealth of operational, financial and utilization data managed by ScheduALL can now be leveraged to create analytics that surpass descriptive information, driving truly actionable business intelligence. Read more about our predictive analytics here.