Investment in IP should not be clouded by complexity

As the fog clears from more than a year of pandemic induced turmoil the broadcast industry should be clear about what lies ahead. Certainly, the broadcast industry trends and direction of travel for the industry is IP and cloud, just as it was pre-2020. We can agree that the global enforced experiment in using internet-based technologies has been largely successful and will translate into permanent infrastructural change. 

But not all roads lead directly to this promised land.

We recognise that every broadcaster has a unique set of business and operational requirements and that the pace of their migration to IP, and the cloud, will be different.

The challenge(s)

Constant investment in expensive infrastructure that quickly becomes outdated, or staffing in-house production experts, is no longer part of most media companies’ budgets. The industry must calibrate an entirely new approach to acquiring and deploying technology. Large capital expenditures are increasingly being replaced by operating expense budgets that are more flexible and aligned with the operational requirements of broadcast facilities. 

The challenge for broadcasters and content owners is to simultaneously meet consumer expectations. An operator’s video distribution services must remain competitive and relevant, but this also has to be achieved in a commercially viable way. Old models and workflows simply don’t scale to meet the level of demand. 

Securing resource efficiency and business agility is within reach over IP – but the journey is not risk-free. Vendor lock-in is as real as it was under the hardware-based systems of SDI. Security of content remains of prime concern as more data traverses over public IP networks. Some broadcasters may be able to move processes to the cloud today, whereas for others the optimum route is to evolve more gradually.

Even where there are virtualized instances of familiar products, the buyer should beware of software adapted to run on COTS machines versus tools rewritten from the ground up to work in the cloud. Only cloud-native solutions will enable ultimate interoperability to scale and flex with different vendor products according to your business needs.

The solution

Net Insight has a mission to make this transition as easy and seamless as possible.  We have developed an end-to-end content transport solution that can flex and scale in whatever environment meets your requirements. Our solutions transport audio, video and data regardless of whether the underlying infrastructure is SDI, IP managed or unmanaged networks – or a combination of them all.

As media moves to the cloud, broadcasters must guard against the risk of lock-in whether that is proprietary vendor equipment or a singular cloud provider. Flexibility, agility and scalability are nothing without control and that should always lie in your hands.

As pioneers in this area, Net Insight has built global-scale cloud platforms that can run in a public cloud, but also private data centres or hybrid solutions. Our cloud solutions can even be built to complement existing satellite infrastructure investments.

For example, Nimbra Edge, our hyper-scale cloud-based media transport solution, works with any cloud provider and can be deployed on-prem or in the public cloud. This flexibility, in combination with a fully open platform with seamless integration of appliance ecosystems from multiple providers, expands the possibilities for operators to monetise existing investments and launch new revenue streams. 

Explore the new ways to deliver media

Net Insight have successfully provided network solutions for production, contribution and distribution solutions for the live media content market for the last 20 years in concert with the industry. We are now putting these decades of experience toward helping partners innovate for the future at the pace of their choosing.

Cloud and IP are buzzwords masking a complex set of operations. Partnering with Net Insight to deliver the most flexible, scalable, reliable and secure solution is the way to de-risk navigating your journey through this transformation.

FAQ

Q: What is video distribution?

A: Video distribution refers to how your video content reaches your target audience through different channels (your website, social media channels, video hosting platforms, etc.), using different types of distribution solutions/tools. It is essential to create a coherent video distribution strategy from the get-go, because even after you have created a high-quality video, you will need to make sure it appears in front of the right audience, at the right time. 

Q: What are cloud-native tools?

A: Cloud-native tools refer to different technologies and applications (containers, microservices, service mesh, delivery models, etc.) that are developed and deployed using cloud-based technologies. They are hosted and managed by the cloud, and built, tested, deployed, and managed in the cloud from end-to-end – utilizing the advantages of cloud computing.

Cloud-native tools empower your organization to run scalable applications in modern dynamic environments (public, private, and hybrid clouds) to deliver media to users or customers at the pace your business needs, with less friction and lower development and maintenance costs.

Q: What is the benefit of cloud-native?

A: The top benefits of being a cloud-native enterprise can be summarized as follows:

• Increased agility and productivity
• Improved scalability and reliability
• Reduced costs through containerization & cloud standards
• Easy access to new tools and services
• Able to attract and retain top talent
• Reduced vendor lock-in
• Automated workflows
• Increased transparency and observability

Cloud-native tools, platforms, and workflows are slowly but surely becoming competitive necessities. Companies that choose the right technologies will be able to maintain their competitive advantages through increased speed and agility. And while adopting cloud-native technologies may seem like a daunting task, just remember, a single technology can already provide considerable benefits to your business.