Virtualised Infrastructure has a Legacy to Match

Playout automation touches every area of a broadcast or video service distribution facility yet the time is drawing near when it will run on virtual machines in a datacentre or in a public cloud over IP network.

Some vendors have declared their roadmaps but with an industry in the early stages of introducing IP infrastructure, the reality is that it is facing at least two years of development until robust and sophisticated capabilities emerge to replace legacy hardware.

TV will move to IP sooner than people think, predicted Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications during the IBC Conference Keynote Assessing the Future of Broadcast TV. The differentiation between broadcaster and operator competitors in broadcast should be the content and the logo, not the network. This wont happen until we can commoditise the network.

While almost all aspects of channel creation are now available as software in a different shape and scale, the generalisation of hardware creates a less deterministic environment for the software to operate upon. At IBC there were warnings that current solutions based on standard IT or cloud architecture were not as efficient or rich in functionality as existing solutions.

The very high level of redundancy, availability and performance with which broadcasters have become accustomed with SDI infrastructure are issues that need to be addressed.

Vogt, a vocal advocate of the urgency to migrate from to IP, recognised the problem. Our customers cant continue to spend the kind of money they are currently spending in proprietary, black box playout and networking gear which needs forklift upgrading every five to seven years because of inefficiencies of the hardware, he said. They need a better cost model. The biggest challenge for companies is how you get from here to there. Its an evolution. There will be hybrid networks and workflows in the short term but we are focused on delivering software architectures today.

The potential to innovate enabled by a truly software defined broadcast environment is galvanising the industry. There cant have been many vendors at IBC not scrabbling to re-engineer their systems toward a future broadcasting infrastructure based on virtualisation, cloud and mobility.

Advantages include rapid channels deployment and business models based on software as a service. Playout in the cloud promises to lower the cost of channel creation and extend channel brands into new markets at a time when established players need to react quickly to OTT. The geographic barriers of legacy technologies could be removed, meaning that channels can be created on the fly, virtually at any location in the world.

The implications of a virtualised production and distribution infrastructure are nothing less than revolutionary, Larry Kaplan, CEO, SDVI told the IBC Conference session The Death of SDI? Channel provisioning in days, not months. 75% or better asset utilisation, not 25%.

Nonetheless there remains a level of comfort that broadcasters get from the physical aspect of SDI, especially when working with routing signals, emergency switching or distribution.

Today then, virtualised playout is the exception rather than the rule with work still ahead in terms of standardisation, control, and management required before sophisticated playout systems to gain mass appeal.

The move from SDI to IP is termed disruptive but actually it is a positive because IP permits the industry to adapt to change at the pace of the web, said Vogt.

For a decade weve been searching for the killer app and over the last couple of years mobility has helped us define video as the killer app. Some 75% of all web traffic over the next few years will be video. Mobile is already deeply disrupting the video industry. Of the 40% of CAGR rate in online video, 23% of that is tied up in real-time video consumption. We all have to embrace the change or get left behind.

To explore these topics further there is wide range of VOD content available to stream from IBC TV at www.ibc.org/VOD plus a close focus on the impact of IP and cloud on media in the Middle East and North African market at the three day summit IBC Content Everywhere MENA.

LINK:	http://www.ibc.org/page.cfm/action=library/libID=2/libEntryID=257/list...
	See more stories from ibc

Most recent headlines