Systems Integration: Toughing It Out In The Broadcast Industry

Systems integration in the broadcast industry must be one of, if not the toughest of all systems integration, says Mark Errington, CEO OASYS Automated Playout.

Having to know information, communications and broadcast technologies in order to help customers deliver content frame accurately is a challenge that telecoms or IT SIs rarely face.
The challenge is often compounded by customers who issue RFI/RFP or tenders based on a technical rather than a functional specification. Often the technical specifications are based around a limited knowledge base and the lack of simple, clearly defined standards or descriptions of products is often designed to confuse rather than help end users. Dealing with a legacy of systems and content often keyed to a proprietary format adds to the challenge and tends towards the renewal of the old, rather than the exploration of new boundaries.
This is where the SIs must excel and stay ahead of the curve. They must understand how to select vendors that are motivated and committed to working together collaboratively, that embrace open standards, that educate and that understand best of breed functional excellence.
What value does an SI add if they are reselling an end to end solution from a single manufacturer? Is it likely that the end to end solution contains the optimal mix of features, functionality and ease of use? When components were connected by SDI, GPI and RS it was easier to select individual best of breed suppliers. 'Best of breed' was defined by a specific piece of hardware for a specific function. The functions have changed and the hardware is now software. The new glue is IP, XML and DB. The life cycle of equipment is now much shorter (four to six years rather than ten to fifteen), but the software solution needs to have the longevity of the old hardware solutions in order to benefit from the total cost of ownership advantages gained from using commodity IT.
The business is not about a Three Musketeers approach – "All for one and one for all". A more Darwinian approach shows that "It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."
Applying this to the broadcast industry, we need to ensure that customisation is about defining a configuration; not about re-inventing the wheel, rather replacing the wheel when it reaches the end of its useful life with a better option.
SIs can collaborate with multiple best of breed vendors and encourage those vendors to collaborate further.
They can collaborate with end users to design and issue functional specifications so their role can be functional integrators, rather than just systems integrators.
There has been some discussion that Channel in a Box vendors are becoming pseudo SIs. We do not see it that way at all. We believe that we as a company are experts in Linear Playout, and the Channel in a Box is only an element of the product portfolio. We are happy to work with SIs and other vendors for MAM, archive and storage, scheduling and traffic, compliance recording and non-linear playout and we intend to maintain a strict product focus. It is actually more a case that the larger vendors, having acquired companies to move them out of the hardware business and into the software business, are more of a challenge to the SI market than Channel in a Box vendors ever will be.
The advantages of an integrated linear playout solution allow the focus to be on the supporting workflows, and the ability to configure the integrated solution to meet the varied demands of reactive as well as scheduled playout is wholly dependent on the symbiotic relationship with the other vendors.
We have heard thoughts that SIs should become software developers, or even hosts for services. In our opinion that would detract from their biggest advantage to the industry; that of educators, facilitators and networkers. Their help in ensuring that the industry understands how to get the best from the vendor community is invaluable. Their expertise over a wide range of IT, communications and entertainment technologies must be maintained and enhanced as new methods of delivery and forms of content are developed. In addition, we need their help to ensure that standards are open and that collateral is accurate and honest and is as much a part of their service as designing the network and workflow.
We see a long future for the expertise brought by SIs to the broadcast industry and we look forward to the continued collaboration with them on the exciting projects that 2014 - and beyond - will bring.
Read the article in the online edition of RFV here.
(IT/JP)