IT And The Future Of IBC...

In the broadcast and media industry, the revolution is just beginning, says John Ive, Director of Business Development and Technology, IABM.

The introduction of IT technology has already had a profound impact, but the ramifications for the industry are far from clear. The well-known statement that "the speed of change is frequently overestimated but the impact grossly underestimated" could well apply. Will IBC this year reflect this change?
At the core of this is Internet Protocol (IP), first conceived in 1974 and developed and through various iterations to standardisation in 1982 and then on to what is known as 'Flag Day' in 1983 when TCP/IP became the only approved protocol on the forerunner to the Internet, ARPANET. All this is now water under the bridge but those actions laid the foundation for what is now an amazing phenomena; the fact that all network connected devices can talk to each other anywhere in the world is the outcome.
The key to the success of the Internet and networks in general is the ubiquity of Internet Protocol. The vastness of scale that has resulted from the universal nature of its deployment is what makes today's networked world so compelling. In many cases, this level of interconnectivity also leads to location being unimportant. When we surf the Internet there is rarely a reason to be concerned or even curious about the location of the server supplying us with web pages.
But what does this mean for the professional broadcast and media industry and IBC?
Having spent many years with industry unique technology, including video tape recorders and specialised interconnects such as SDI and HD-SDI, we have been isolated from these developments. We have created a world where expensive bespoke hardware is the norm. While IT and network technology was growing up we could dismiss its relevance due to poor network speeds, limited storage capacity and inadequate processing power.
In recent years this has moved from being a reasonable claim to ignoring the vast strides that have been made in IT technology resulting from the ubiquity of the solutions. The huge worldwide market across many industries and consequently the huge development resources invested, are rapidly eliminating those shortcomings. Recent developments such as virtualisation and software defined networks bring new possibilities even closer.
We could be rapidly moving to a broadcast and media world where bespoke hardware implementations are isolated islands in an IT and software sea.
But this is not about a one for one replacement of individual components, it’s a fundamental shift of mind-set which will change the supply industry business structure and associated business models. It could fundamentally change the nature of IBC as less dedicated, single function black boxes are shipped to Amsterdam and demonstrated.
Already there are indications that up to 50% of broadcast hardware budgets are spent on IT products and that percentage will increase. Designing and making bespoke hardware could become a specialised activity for peripheral products such as cameras. For most other categories, IT technology is wiping out profit margins on hardware. So manufacturers will need increasingly to concentrate on software. With IP taking care of communications, it will be networks and software APIs not bespoke connectors determining interconnectivity and functionality between application components.
Physical Location of the systems becomes less important as the concept of virtualisation becomes more commonplace. The case for broadcasters to pay for services which are agile and can respond to their changing needs day by day or even moment by moment will be compelling. Want to trial a new channel tomorrow? Need to increase your resources to cope with an important sports event for three weeks? Want to close it down? No problem.
The IT industry is putting in place all the components needed to make this happen. They are not doing it exclusively for the broadcast and media industry but for all the vertical sectors they serve. They are not interested in taking over our industry, they are a horizontal not a vertical solution provider. Indeed many of the world's largest IT corporations play a "low-key" role at IBC. They provide building blocks for software companies and system integrators to turn in to applications and systems. But how pervasive will these new developments be at IBC? And as more of our industry migrates to software and generic IT hardware, how do you get your message across and standout from the crowd at IBC? Not long to wait to find out!
Read the feature in the online edition of Regional Film & Video here.
(IT/JP)