NAB 2019 Reflections: Cisco's Bryan Bedford On Why Finding Engineers With a Mixed Skillset in Broadcast and IP is the Industry's Greatest Challenge Cisco offers training for broadcast engineers looking to add to their expertise with beginner and advanced training sessions By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Thursday, April 18, 2019 - 2:44 pm
Print This Story
Visitors of Cisco's booth at the 2019 NAB Show were treated to a colorful, journey-like experience that helped map out and simplify the end-to-end workflow of the media supply chain covered within the popular products and solutions of the Cisco Media Blueprint. One of the crown jewels of the chain was an overview of the company's COTS-based switching solution known as IP Fabric for Media (which was also celebrated with a Best in Show Award from TV Technology).
While its booth buzzed with activity, we got the chance to talk with Bryan Bedford, Cisco's Global Industry Lead for Media & Sports about significant challenges and opportunities facing the sports video production industry (and the larger media ecosystem) as the transition to IP engulfs it.
Bryan Bedford, Global Industry Lead for Media & Sports, Cisco
Bedford believes that perhaps the greatest challenge currently facing the live video operations world (especially sports) is developing below-the-line talent with a mixed knowledge in both broadcast and IP engineering.
The topic a multiple times over is this idea of enabling the workforce to learn a new skill set, Bedford said at NAB Show last week. It's an issue of investment and return. When do I do it and with who and how?' It's investing into personnel and that's the big thing that needs to happen next to move the industry forward.
The standards are there. The technology is there, he continued. Most people have moved to an as-a-service business model at the application layer and the supporting infrastructure is there, but what's happening is our biggest customers are saying I don't have the people that know IT and broadcast together.' The up and coming generation knows IT but they don't know broadcast. The older crowd doesn't want to learn IT. So we're in this chicken and the egg situation. We've got to figure out how to get over that hump.
Beginning as recently as last year, Cisco has begun offering training sessions for both beginners and advanced engineers with a broadcasting background to learn more about the differences that come with an IP infrastructure in a live environment. The training team was on-site at NAB Show to help increase awareness of the opportunities available to those in the industry ready to learn something new.
This is about investing in what our customers need to make this transition to an IP/broadcast skillset, but also all of the system integrators and companies out there that are trying to play a hand in services and delivery, says Bedford. They are also trying to do this.
For those with a broadcast engineering background with an interest in dipping their toes in the water on IP, Cisco's IP Foundation for Broadcast Engineers (CCIPFM) has a v1.0 course that can be taken (either virtually or at a specific location available in various cities globally) that can help those who anticipate using IP technologies to replace SDI-based backbones. The course covers basic principles of IP including Ethernet functions and standards, the TCP/IP stack, and other technologies used throughout a modern network.
Back at the NAB Show booth, the Cisco Media Blueprint was the star with the company making some notable changes to the way they are telling the story of how Cisco can be a leader in the business's move to IP.
We need to make sure our Blueprint is speaking the language that resonates with this audience, says Bedford. [We need to] use less Cisco language (IT language) and be a part of the industry's language. The idea of the supply chain of media content and how its developed, distributed, and published: that's the language. Elements around the supply chain of media workflows is what people [in this industry] are used to hearing. The good thing is that we have technologies and solutions that align to that pretty well.
Bedford outlined Cisco's NAB Show messaging in four chapters: Collaboration, the Move to IP, When in an IP World What Comes Next?, and Distribution. Within the move from SDI to IP is the much-publicized battleground around COTS-based switching. For Cisco, its one of the main opportunities that they are dedicating the most effort to helping the industry move forward on.
It drives the most traffic and drives the most interest because its real, says Bedford. If people are going to make that jump, then they've got to understand. Because of our legacy, investment, and research and development around network switching, that is important for us. So showcasing new and innovative solutions around that is part of what we're doing. That's the next piece of that supply-chain journey. Once you've ingested and developed that storyline, you have to capture it and do something with it.
That monitoring of the flow leads into Bedford's third point: you've got your media in an IP world now what? From there, in Bedford's eyes, it becomes a story of how do you virtualize that and leverage traditional data center technology in a broadcast environment.
There's lots of innovation happening around virtualized workflow, he says. We're showing Avid in our booth around virtualized asset management workflows. We're showing Imagine [Communications] here with virtualized media playout.
As for the IP Fabric for Media solution, its gaining serious momentum worldwide with notable on-the-record deployments at Arena TV in Australia and Canal+ in France. For Bedfo
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
NAB 2019 Reflections: Cisco's Bryan Bedford On Why Finding Engineers With a Mixed Skillset in Broadcast and IP is the Industry's Greatest Challenge Cisco offers training for broadcast engineers looking to add to their expertise with beginner and advanced training sessions By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
