Sony Leverages Innovations, Acquisitions to Transform Cloud Production Options By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Tuesday, October 12, 2021 - 12:12 pm
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NAB may not be happening this week but Sony is introducing some new products as it continues to drive improvements across its product line. The goal? A transformation from a company known primarily for physical media and hardware to also being a leader in cloud-based production and even distribution services.
A big part of the transformation has been a result of the acquisition of Nevion in September of 2020. Deon LeCointe, Sony Electronics, director, Networked Solutions, says Sony created a new team that is focused on bringing Nevion's orchestration and management solutions together with Sony's IP-enabled products, cameras, and switchers.
The acquisition of Nevion has helped Sony complete its production ecosystem.
We're really taking a holistic approach toward the market about how we position these products and services and how they benefit the market overall, he says. IP is a foundational technology that's really helping people to drive remote production, but there's also a strong move toward cloud. We're trying to address the needs in IP environments, cloud environments, and hybrid environments because we do think hybrid is going to be the way a lot of people are going to operate until we're at a place where people feel comfortable going fully virtualized, fully cloud.
Nevion's VideoIPath, for example, is an orchestration and SDN control system that provides connection management, service assurance and network inventory capabilities for service providers and broadcasters. The system may be used for managing a variety of networks ranging from international or national contribution networks to broadcast facility or campus infrastructures.
There's a lot of work going on right now to integrate a number of features from Sony's LSM into IPath, says LeCointe. IPath manages and monitors IP and SDI connectivity across a LAN or a WAN environment and it also can establish and release connections in the network, either ad hoc or on a scheduled basis. It also has the ability to establish and release connections in the network, either ad hoc or on a scheduled basis. So, it is really helping bridge the gap between broadcast and IP.
As concepts that used to be only heard in IT (Mesh, Dual Star, Spine Leaf) begin to be part of the broadcast engineering workflows, Sony believes its new division will make it easier for the two worlds to come together.
The combination of Nevion and Sony cloud services is giving companies like Discovery a new way to work.
Sony Live System Manager's (LSM) Registration and Discovery Service (RDS) has already been ported over to IPath so that IPath supports more devices via our NMOS RDS, says LeCointe. And in the future, we will add name and tally management support and tally management support for the NDS bus management protocol.
An example of the system in action is a Discovery Communications which has used it to create two private clouds, one in the UK, one in the Netherlands.
We created a concept called dynamic affinity, says LeCointe. The idea is that any production room in any location can be connected to either one of the two clouds and they were using Nevion solutions to decrease the bandwidth and provide service assurance between the different clouds and the different production control rooms.
Low-latency JPEG-XS is being used to provide lossless transmission and near real-time operations across thousands of miles.
With JPEG-XS and Video IPath they were able to consolidate the technical resources into key data centers around the globe, says LeCointe.
Thinking Small with Micro Services
The NavigatorX software architecture allows for micro services to be connected.
Hugo Gaggioni, Sony Electronics, Pro Division, Chief Technology Officer, says Sony one transformation is moving away from a monolithic approach to cloud services to one that is based around micro services for production and other functions.
Before we had a really comprehensive machine application with tons of functionality that in some cases the end user could care less about, says Gaggioni. We were selling a gigantic piece of and then some would say they just want the input management system. So, we took those functions apart.
Navigator X, an orchestration and media asset management system, allows for microservices to be joined together and form a suite of seven toolkits to be managed with maximum efficiency. The toolkits include Volume Management Service; Workflow Management Service; Import Management Service; Content Management Service; Dashboard Management Service; Content Analysis Service; and User Management Service.
They can be deployed by customers to the scale required depending on the complexity of the end user requests, says Gaggioni. We also can optimize and develop the microservices independently as when they are tied together as a very complex piece of software it is difficult to make a tiny change. And now if a micro service fails the rest of the system would continue to operate properly.
Quick updates and fixes are only two of many benefits. It also allows for each service to be scaled as needed and deployed only where needed. For example, toolkits can be joined together to create media supply chains, automatic scene selection, production platforms for multiple programs, and more. More importantly, they can all share the same hybrid cloud system structure and be connected to other Sony systems, like Hawk-Eye, to improve functionality. The ability to capture live events directly into the cloud environment coupled with the Hawk-Eye System provides a one-two punch that is allowing professional sports l
