In this latest instalment of “A Day in the Life,” we look at the evolution of skills needed in the changing M&E industry through a lens of project collaboration. TMT Insights’ Chris McCarthy outlines the approach, tools, resources, and open mindset required to successfully complete multi-partner projects and address complex media supply chain challenges.

While every customer engagement has different goals, Chris emphasizes that success typically comes down to the same formula: developing a collaborative approach focused on simplifying the solution as much as possible, with minimal manual touchpoints and maximum automation.

Please briefly explain your role.

Chris McCarthy, Vice President, Media Solutions, TMT Insights. I oversee our Solutions Engagement and MediaOps teams, working closely with customers to provide workflow design and guidance on best practices, as well as hands-on assistance with onboarding and accelerating new supply chain builds.

How do you approach each project from the outset, in terms of matching a customer’s overall goals with the right technology and workflow engineering plan?

Our initial goal with every project is to simplify the ultimate solution as much as possible, working with the customer hand-in-hand to design a plan that gets to the end goal quickly and efficiently—with the least amount of manual touch points and as much automation as possible.

We recognize that every organization is at a different point in their transformation journey—whether that means moving their operations to the cloud, leveraging existing solutions with new technology integrations, or gaining better visibility into their content workflows to shorten delivery timeframes. It’s critical to listen and communicate with each customer so we can understand what to prioritize instead of focusing on everything all at once, which slows transformation.

How do you choose and assemble your teams for a new project? Is it based on experience, work styles, skills, or is it all of the above?

When a project includes several integrations with multiple vendors, we first look to our team members who have experience with the specific tools and workflow requirements in question. Then we combine those direct matches with the people whose profiles are a good fit. For example, maybe a new project offers an opportunity to develop specific skills that will help their career development. We’re also fortunate that TMT has fostered an environment where each team member is encouraged to continually sharpen and expand their cloud and supply chain knowledge base, keeping them adaptable, relevant, and ready for any new project that comes our way.

Can you recall a project that called for unique services on the part of TMT, for example a new type of Polaris deployment or software customization, ultimately requiring a combination of skills?

That happens often. On one recent project, we had to integrate Polaris not just with other vendors’ tools, but also with the customer’s home-grown title management system. This created a single point of entry for all deliverables into that client’s ecosystem, enabling deliverables to be tracked and associated with a title version, and allowed us to automate the content acquisition process from upload through ingest, and asset registration.

Do these types of unique experiences help prepare you and your teams for the next project, in a sense giving you a head start by not always having to start from a blank page each time?

Yes, and that type of head start is a huge benefit for us and for the customer. Our teams learn how to continually incorporate what they’ve done on one project, internalize that information and then apply the lessons learned to the next. Once we’ve done the work of integrating Polaris with a third party, we can take many of those same steps in a similar use case without having to start from square one since we've already figured out many of the pitfalls we might encounter and how to avoid them. All that definitely expedites the next deployment.

Are there often key takeaways or lessons learned from each project that you can apply to the next collaborative process, in terms of resource deployment, working with teams and partners, etc.?

Every project reinforces the importance of real partnerships and open communication, moving past the transactional aspect of a relationship to begin building a true community where everyone shares knowledge and resources.

The TMT, customer teams, and partners we are integrating with are constantly in contact throughout the duration of a project, through weekly status updates and notifications of any blockers—doing whatever is necessary to keep everyone apprised and get the project over the line. Developing and maintaining strong relationships with everyone really helps because you can all speak the same language and there's an understanding of the end goal and of how each element needs to come together.

Are large-scale, multi-partner projects easier to manage and successfully complete now than maybe 5 years ago, due to the advancement of people’s skills and the acceleration of new technology development?

Cloud-based media supply chains and workflow automation tools have been available for years now, but the technologies are more mature, intuitive, and comprehensive. Our technology partners are developing powerful APIs in line with their software applications. TMT has also played a large role in this transformation through its development of tools like Polaris and ongoing efforts to instil a stronger understanding by all M&E organizations of how every component of a supply chain workflow stitches together.

Our industry has moved away from a reliance on standalone products that were retrofitted to work together as best as possible, and on to more nimble software solutions designed for seamless interoperability.

This shift reflects more than just a change in how technologies are developed. It illustrates the ongoing need to maintain an open mindset and think of your professional skill sets as constant works in progress.

TMT Insights is a professional services and software development company delivering leading capabilities in the digital supply chain, including media content management, cloud technology, and SaaS/D2C experiences to global media companies. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills within the media & entertainment, digital & cloud technology space, our team offers industry leading services such as strategy and CXO advisory, product ideation & innovation, cloud transformation, process re-engineering and development to our partners. As early adopters of new technologies, we embrace the power of collaboration and work with our partners to combine our guidance with action to further drive efficiency, value, and scale to their communities. www.tmtinsights.com

Note: If you’re an M&E professional that is interested in participating, please submit your request for consideration at https://tmtinsights.com/contact-us.

DALLAS and LONDON—TMT Insights, which specializes in professional services and software development for the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, has announced that it is working with the Global Media & Entertainment Talent Manifesto to offer a new content series, “A Day in the Life …”

Global Media & Entertainment Talent Manifesto is a worldwide initiative formed to address the shortage of diverse technical and engineering talent across the media technology sector.

The series explores the stories and skills that are shaping today’s media technology innovators, while shining a light on the transformations taking place across technology, product and operations.

More specifically, the “A Day in the Life …” series will focus on a diverse group of professionals in key M&E roles. The series will support the broader goal to align the industry on a modern-day skills map that will provide transparency into the upskilling and talent required to support today’s media supply chain production and distribution services, TMT Insights reported.

“With more organizations transitioning to cloud environments, traditional M&E roles have undergone a significant makeover,” said Hannah Barnhardt, COO and co-founder of TMT Insights. “New skills and capabilities are required along every touchpoint of the digital media supply chain. The timing for TMT’s new content series aligns with the launch of the Global Media & Entertainment Talent Manifesto’s initiatives, as the next wave of M&E leadership prepares to take its seat at the table.”

The first spotlight features Jake Russell, TMT’s Director of Media Solutions. In this debut edition, Russell talks about a standard day, what drew him to M&E, how the cloud “changed everything,” and what’s on his wish list for M&E’s future.

The series will be published by TV Tech and is hosted by TMT Insights and the Global M&E Talent Manifesto. If you’re an M&E professional that is interested in participating, please submit your request for consideration at https://tmtinsights.com/contact-us.

The landscape of the broadcast industry, as well as the wider media and entertainment (M&E) sector, has undergone significant changes over the past five years, and trying to envision what it will look like in the next five or ten years is an incredibly challenging task. 

If we rewind to February 2020 and ask M&E executives to anticipate the near future, it's improbable that anyone would have predicted the subsequent surge in consumer consumption and the global shift towards remote accessibility that unfolded within weeks. 

This unpredictability is the main reason for a heightened focus on business resilience: an organization’s ability to adapt and pivot in the face of industry disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations and protecting its people, its customers, intellectual property, assets, and brand reputation.

Proliferation of Diverse Streaming Services
Media and Entertainment (M&E) is one of the fastest-moving industries, with an accelerated rate of technology development constantly driving new innovations across the content landscape. The past few years have seen media organizations reimagine every aspect of their operations to continually find new ways of attracting, engaging, and retaining audiences that have more viewing and content options than ever. Fueling this unprecedented choice is the proliferation of diverse streaming services, whether it’s new VOD platforms, FAST channels or new services launched by traditional broadcasters. 

Now, after such a prolonged period of rapid expansion and development, M&E companies are faced with increasing budget pressures, emerging technologies and workflows, audiences with higher entertainment expectations and increasingly discerning tastes. The global demand for diverse media across multiple platforms in multiple formats is increasing and showing no signs of slowing. While it’s true that more content can create more business, it can also strain M&E operations almost to a breaking point. 

These shifting industry dynamics are coupled with the significant macroeconomic trends occurring globally over the past few years: economic uncertainty amid concerns over a coming recession, supply chain breakdowns, rising utility costs, geopolitical conflicts, and the changing nature of work as organizations struggle to strike the right balance of onsite/WFH for their needs while meeting the changing expectations of their increasingly distributed workforces.

If the past few years companies got to enjoy the honeymoon of the content boom, then they are now starting to move into a sustainable and long marriage with their customers and it’s time to take a hard look at their business models focused on long term benefits for everyone. We’re seeing this happen more and more across the customers we support, and we’re not alone.

A recent study by Deloitte notes that continued change in the media and entertainment business is a certainty, as “studios and video streamers face the reality of their own market disruption, trying to find profits in a less profitable business,” not only competing with each other for attention, time, and revenues, but also with social media, user-generated content, and gaming.

Which brings us back to the focus on business resilience. An Ernst & Young survey reported that “37% of executives said that without reinvention their companies would cease to exist in five years” – and that was before the pandemic; those numbers have only risen in subsequent post-COVID surveys. A recent poll by SAS found that organizations value business resilience if they are to survive, and even thrive. However, while 97% of business executives believe having a strategy in place is important, only 47% believe their organization is properly prepared.

Assessing the Current Landscape
In our current world, business resilience is linked to the trend of organizations paring down in the face of massive layoffs as they deal with the impact of the last five years, which saw a massive acceleration of technology buildouts. We're starting to see a transition now from a time when companies were in an arms race to develop content infrastructures, essentially throwing money and bodies at everything and everywhere to move as quickly as possible. Now there’s an increasing urgency to regain fiscal control, even as they serve a consumer base that's continually expecting more. 

Organizations of all sizes are wrestling with how to proactively optimize their financial forecasting and some even looking to return to more traditional CAPEX economic models that offer some level of predictability without requiring massive recurring costs while still maintaining a cloud presence.  Business leaders in nearly every vertical and market sector are refocusing their priorities to remain as agile and forward-looking as possible, often fundamentally changing how they operate to deliver maximum efficiency. 

The potential benefits certainly include significant cost savings and greater operational efficiency, but they also extend to greater resource management, enhanced customer insights, increased productivity, profitability, and agility.

Business resilience is key to organizations gaining a competitive edge by adapting quickly and acting strategically. The fundamental challenge is building a team that can continue to support that level of ongoing growth with an infrastructure capable of avoiding costly downtime, identifying and preventing vulnerabilities, and maintaining business operations in the face of unexpected intrusions.

True business resilience requires a holistic mindset, taking into consideration every aspect of an operation: security, business, and data protection, even shifting behaviors when it comes to technology funding sources.

Previously, low interest rates made funding easily accessible to media organizations and tech start-ups. Raising debt was relatively painless because, with interest rates so low, companies were basically borrowing free money. 

That’s not the case anymore. Now there is more scrutiny over profits, resulting in less funding for tech companies and a change in how companies invest their money, carefully examining where they put every penny. There’s clearly more pressure on teams to make do with less.

As companies are doing everything possible, within financial reason, to ensure the business resiliency of their organization, they can’t lose sight of the resiliency of their customer base and how they can defend themselves from sharp changes in consumer behavior. At the end of the day, everything else is unimportant if you don’t have your customer base secured.

Balancing Urgency and Risk
How many businesses really understand their risk tolerance? Do you know yours? Achieving resilience requires an understanding of the criticality of processes, assets, data, and user information, and the level of disruption a brand is willing to tolerate. Then, businesses can properly evaluate the corresponding business impact on the organization and their external audiences: customers, employers, partners and shareholders. 

This often means asking some tough questions, starting with: “What does the recovery process look like for us after a catastrophic event,” “What is the timeframe for that recovery?” and “How long can I live with the effects of that catastrophic event?”

As companies increasingly rely on third parties like Amazon or Google as their infrastructure, they are conducting more careful risk assessments of their entire operations. Many are also adopting an approach of “risk-based resilience,” recognizing that not all business processes, capabilities and services are as critical as others and don’t warrant the same level of response. 

Now more questions need to be asked: “Are we okay with being down for six hours if that's the amount of time it takes us to get back up, or are we okay with being down for an hour but maybe we lost the last three hours of data?” “How long does it take me to bring everything back up again without having to spend a fortune while still providing my core services to my key customers?”

Those are the types of trade-offs people are confronting.

In recent years, we have witnessed significant cultural transformations that have reshaped our understanding of resilience. We have had to adjust the way we lead our personal lives, engage in social interactions, establish work routines, and even redefine our notions of long-term success and growth.

Similarly, business resilience demands a similar adaptable mindset, a readiness to embrace change, and the implementation of robust strategies and partnerships to withstand any challenges that come our way.

As we head toward 2021 with anticipation of escaping the craziness of 2020, Dan Castles, CEO of Telestream, shares some insights and predictions on the year ahead for the media and entertainment industry. 

A YEAR TO REMEMBER

I don’t need to tell you much about 2020 that you don’t already know. I will share that with all the devastation brought to the world by COVID-19, and a U.S. election season like nothing we could have imagined, we’ve learned a lot about each other for better or worse. 

For companies in our industry, it’s been a similar situation. Some have fared much better than others. Some have survived by making very tough decisions, which in the long run will make them stronger as we come out of COVID. I’m still amazed at how quickly companies were able to respond, despite all odds, and keep some semblance of normalcy. 

Shows continued to air, critical news and information got out there. And it’s no surprise that with so many viewers isolating themselves, the appetite for entertainment (binge watching) grew enormously and continues to grow even now. This created even more relentless competition for viewers’ attention, forcing media companies to streamline operations and quickly adapt their processes with many people working from home. 

This strain soon exposed the weakest links in the chain. If you didn’t have an infrastructure for remote working, or a business continuity plan in place, it showed. The pandemic created a different type of disaster in terms of disaster recovery than many businesses had planned for. Still, things got done and hard lessons were learned. Looking to 2021, I think we can all agree that we can only go up from here.

2021 AND PRESSING THE RESET BUTTON

Much of what we’ll see in 2021 was already in play, but if 2020 did anything positive, it was to accelerate the pace of evolution in key areas. 

The cloud is always a continuous point of discussion and I could say “I foresee more rapid cloud adoption in 2021” and that would be easy to get right, but it’s more nuanced than that. Telestream placed a bet on the cloud several years ago and we’ve been evolving our strategy in that direction ever since. 

Most importantly, and underlying that strategy, is the evolution of how people work together. Remote working was a good idea long before the pandemic arrived because we don’t always need people and systems in the same building and we certainly don’t need to send giant teams and supporting infrastructure to every live event. The pandemic has shown us that people don’t necessarily need to sit in cubicles from 9 to 5 in order to be valuable contributors. 2021 is an opportunity to press the reset button and work smarter and more efficiently. For some companies, this might be a do or die proposition.

CLOUD ADOPTION ACCELERATES

The pandemic has hastened the onset of remote workflows that were already beginning or even well established for some companies. Remote workflows almost exclusively make use of the cloud in some form. And while many still associate the cloud with media storage, it’s the “cloud compute” part of the equation that really changes the game. 

The compute power in the cloud allows even the smallest companies to have access to the same resources, flexibility and scalable business models as the larger players. Using the cloud in this way has the potential to “float all boats” in regard to any size and budget production being able to benefit from “pay as you go” media processing and distribution workflows. More businesses are going to take a close look at the cloud in 2021, and continued remote working will drive that. 

The security of valuable media assets is a big issue for many content owners, but the truth is that it’s hard to find a more secure ecosystem than the cloud. Cloud-based workflows are inherently more secure than on-premises equivalents because cloud-based production and distribution can utilize the robust security architecture that has been purpose-built for the cloud and is monitored 24/7 by teams of security experts. Banks and other financial organizations know this, and everyone who uses tools from Google or Microsoft or Salesforce depends on that security every day. I think 2021 can be the year that the M&E industry makes great strides in accepting that security is not an issue in the cloud.

REMOTE WORKFLOWS ARE HERE TO STAY

In 2021, I believe we’ll see plenty of teams continuing to work remotely as an ongoing, managed offering to employees. In this context, the cloud will be examined for how to accomplish this while at the same time, naturally, there will be continued focus on the economics of cloud-based computing for heavy lifting media workflows. 

A key component of sustainable remote workflows is not to move the media. If someone needs to QC a program master remotely, waiting two hours for it to download is costly and inefficient. This is one of the reasons that we developed our new GLIM Media Player that allows stakeholders to play full resolution media files remotely from anywhere they have an internet connection. Even as vaccines are made available and the pandemic subsides, if companies can save money on travel expenses by not flying every single operator, engineer and supporting equipment to events, they are going to want to do it.

OTT ADVERTISING NEEDS HELP

Monetization challenges continue to plague the distributors of content via OTT, and ads are at the very heart of the issue. Despite the revenue implications of ads not playing properly, the negative impacts on brands can be incalculable. 2021 will be an important year for the industry to solve ad problems in the OTT pipeline and end viewer frustration with ads being inserted at the wrong time or being played repeatedly. 

This will start with comprehensive monitoring and quality control processes that enable broadcasters and content owners to know where the problems are. We’ve been working hard on our new Stream Monitoring software (cloud based) to help address the need for ad markers and support the automation of this process while enhancing the ability to detect errors throughout the distribution chain. 

It’s also critical that content owners get live event content accessible to viewers as soon as possible to maximize advertising revenue. Viewers expect things to be available immediately, and the industry needs to deliver on that expectation. The technology is there, we just need to use it.

SUPPLIER CONSOLIDATION

There will be an acceleration in consolidation for the simple fact that so many companies have been impacted by COVID, their survival is based on finding a new home. You have motivated buyers who expect favorable pricing and motivated sellers who need to get a deal done. There will be management changes as new energies are needed in many cases to deal with the new reality their particular company is facing. There will be more downsizing as we go into the new year from the simple reality of how 2020 will end for many. Company cultures will be challenged, and employee trust tested to the max. The cold, hard truth is there are financial reverberations from 2020 and COVID that will take all of 2021 and beyond to overcome. 

TRADESHOWS

In our industry, the two primary trade shows are positioned at the end of Q3 and the start of Q4 this year. Getting any traction at either show will be very dependent on the successful rollout of a vaccine. When will companies feel comfortable enough to fly a large number of staff to join 30-50 thousand people in an enclosed space for almost a week? My prediction is that we won’t know until June if these two shows have any chance of being remotely relevant/effective or will even take place. 

As we move into 2022, it will be interesting to see what the “bounce back” looks like for these tradeshows, as all suppliers have had to get creative on how to message themselves and their product announcements via new methods for a fraction of what a trade show historically costs. Will vendors revert back to old habits or will there be a “new norm” with tradeshows going forward? I suspect over the next several years, tradeshows will regain some traction and for many exhibitors, the booth size may return to former sizes, but the ultimate customer attendance at these shows will be down at least 25% from the most recent pre-COVID levels. And this is beyond the 2021 shows, where attendance will be marginal at best.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 

The bottom line is that 2021 will be another year of transition, but this time, a transition to a new reality. I don’t believe we will get back to a new normal until 2022. 

On a very personal note, I believe that people throughout the world crave hope, encouragement and a sense of unity versus the division we have been dealing with at least here in the U.S. That said, our recent election proved there continues to exist a great divide in opinion and perspective and I think the average person on the street would hope that we can find a way to discuss our differences to find solutions going forward versus maintaining the view that each other’s opinions are 100% mutually exclusive and there exits zero middle ground. 

My prediction is that this middle ground (the 40% not represented by either political extreme in the U.S.) will gain positive traction and the collective will of this group will force the two extremes to figure out how to coexist or they too, will become irrelevant. 

Today’s media companies are increasingly being put under the pressure of higher performance demands, specifically the demands of 4K, 8K and even higher-resolution video formats, as well as the cost of housing ever-growing content archives. Adding to this strain, media companies have to manage and leverage growing data sets faster than ever before, to both quickly satisfy new business requirements and adapt to an increasingly competitive industry overall.

To manage these growing performance requirements of production applications—from rendering and editing to transcoding—and the requirement to store constantly increasing volumes of data, the traditional response has been for studios to build multiple tiers of data storage. With this approach, each tier is designed to address the performance and cost requirements of some set of applications in the pipeline. In fact, we as an industry have been building these storage pyramids so long that storage hierarchies have become entrenched as the doctrinaire way to manage data for media.

However, this approach also adds unnecessary complexities and costs for media companies. As these performance demands only grow for media companies, so do these complexities, costs and overall roadblocks that stand in the way of further digital transformation.

So what are the steps that media companies can take? It starts with truly understanding the shortcomings of sticking with the status quo for managing data, identifying the new technologies and approaches that open the door for a different way of thinking, and mapping these investments back to the ever-changing path of media and broadcast’s future. 

THE PYRAMID CREATES COMPLEXITY

Having multiple tiers of storage inherently adds complexity in several ways. Most obviously, someone, or more likely some script, MAM or data manager, must migrate assets from one tier to another as they move from creation, through production and into the organization’s archive. While global namespace overlays, automounter scripts and storage management software make these moves more or less transparent to users, the resulting infrastructures are relatively fragile. Even worse, that fragility makes the studio overly dependent on the one or two system administrators who really understand how they work and can patch them one more time when something breaks. This dependency only causes inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the overall media workflow. 

In many media organizations that complexity is amplified by their use of specialized storage solutions at some stages of their pipeline. While media-specific storage solutions like SAN file systems have historically provided better performance, they add complexity with client agents. Similarly, application-specific storage may support proprietary APIs that may improve collaboration, but using dedicated storage for specific applications just increases the number of storage systems, data movement scripts and independent pools of free space to manage.

The pyramidal storage hierarchy only really makes sense when the cost differential between the tiers is large enough to offset the cost and complexity of migrating data between them, and the slower tier is still fast enough to support those applications that access data there. But as users’ storage performance requirements and the demand for online content rise, and the performance of traditional disk storage actually falls, the old reliable storage pyramid is starting to crumble for media organizations.

CHALLENGING THE PYRAMID

We’ve seen some people advocating for a “two-tier” approach to data storage, with active and permanent tiers. While two tiers are certainly simpler than four or five, data still has to be moved from the active tier to permanent tiers and back as needed. While media asset and storage management systems claim to make “intelligent” decisions when placing data, some data will inevitably be misclassified to the permanent tier and will need to be retrieved on demand for users, slowing their work. 

Recent changes in media workflows and storage technologies challenge the underlying premise of tiering in the first place—that the total cost of multiple tiers will be lower. A new generation of all-flash storage systems revolutionizes flash economics by bringing the total cost of storing all of a media organization’s online assets, from the most active to archive in a single, simple-to-manage namespace, below the cost of tiered storage. 

By combining the performance demands of an organization’s I/O-intensive applications with the capacity demands of their archives, these systems can manage lower cost flash to satisfy the cost, performance, resiliency and endurance requirements of the most demanding media organizations.

Storing active and archival data on fast, all-flash storage not only eliminates all the complexity of moving data between tiers but also makes all that archival data available for further reuse. For example, rather than relying on decades-old metadata, organizations can unleash “GPU farms” to use artificial intelligence and recognize artists, logos or other images in their libraries for further efficiencies. 

By switching to all-flash storage infrastructure, media organizations can deploy a single system for everything from special effects rendering to feeding their streaming services and archiving their most valuable media assets in a platform that delivers unmatched benefits.

ROADMAPPING THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

With growing competition as major broadcasters expand their offerings to the streaming world, rising demand for a wide range of content (especially as consumers spend more time at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic) and media organizations looking to drive the bottom line and produce a strong ROI throughout these increased investments to satisfy such demands, the need for efficient and effective infrastructure is at an all-time high. 

While recent months may have served as an accelerator for the demand for high-quality, data-intensive applications and content, this demand will only grow as competition in the space does as well. This means no stone must go unturned for media companies as they both evaluate and reimagine their workflows for the modern media and entertainment industry.

As such, media organizations should explore the next class of storage systems. If an all-flash storage model doesn’t cost more than a multitiered pyramid and yet still gives you increased performance, why would you continue to invest in the multitiered approach?

Howard Marks is technologist extraordinary and plenipotentiary at VAST Data.

2019 was truly action-packed for the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry. The wheels of consolidation gained major momentum with several megamergers taking place—from Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox to NBCUniversal and Sky merging key operations. The VoD space got a lot more crowded, with giants like Apple, Disney and others making their foray.

With all these changes shaking the industry landscape, content creators are increasingly looking to re-engineer their media supply chains for greater agility, flexibility, operational efficiencies and cost benefits. From small-time studios to international broadcasters, everyone is rethinking their technology choices and weighing their options. Here are the top five tech trends we predict will have a major impact in 2020:

1. Multicloud solutions will redefine the Media Asset Management (MAM) landscape

The need for speed and scalability along with ongoing improvements in cloud security will drive content creators to embrace MAM solutions based on multicloud architecture. These empower users with the flexibility to leverage elastic, best-of-breed public cloud infrastructure or tap into on-premise infrastructure as required. Users will be able to extend and virtualize their supply chain without having to make additional investments in MAM installation for each site. This flexibility will not only help save costs, but will also drive operational efficiencies.

2. Increasing demand for a connected media supply chain

As cost and time pressures continue to weigh down content creators, fragmented supply chains will give way to connected supply chains. The focus will be on automation, and in many cases the transition to using one, single software across the enterprise rather than multiple standalone solutions. This will make asset management far more efficient and cost effective, especially for media enterprises with an extensive global footprint. Centralization will enable them to enjoy 360-degree visibility and economies of scale by consolidating business processes. At the same time, it will provide flexibility to speedily identify, onboard and monitor best-fit global talent for managing rush volumes and time-to-market pressures.

3. AI to take the center stage of media supply chains

Artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly become a key enabler, powering intelligent, next-generation media supply chains. AI solutions will be instrumental in speeding up content operations and reducing workloads for human operators. Media enterprises will focus on how such solutions can help solve strategic media use cases and how they can be consumed efficiently given the challenges and costs of deploying AI solutions at scale. There will be focused usage of AI solutions with microservice architecture and an increase in demand for metadata that is contextual, accurate and actionable. We believe 2020 will see AI being applied to key areas in the content value chain, including content generation, content enrichment, content preparation and content delivery. In addition, more media enterprises will consume AI as part of their MAM ecosystem, in areas such as metadata enrichment, search & discovery, localization, remastering, sports highlights, trailer creation, playout monitoring and OTT distribution.

4. VoD explosion to drive adoption of automation-led technology

The VoD universe will continue to experience cut-throat competition, as new, big-ticket entrants with massive content libraries will challenge the existing players. At the same, purchasing power limitations may lead to “streaming subscription fatigue” setting in. While the speed at which consumers demand new content will increase, the willingness to pay will limit the market, where only the best will succeed. These forces will compel content creators to focus on enhancing operational efficiencies like never before. In a bid to tap new global markets and achieve faster time-to-market, content creators will search for new avenues of automation. Business processes such as localization, compliance versioning and digital distribution will be prime candidates for automation.

5. Standards-driven approach towards metadata management

Taking cues from the manufacturing sector, media enterprises will adopt a more organized approach to managing metadata. Metadata created at different stages in the supply chain—such as production, Quality Check (QC) and cataloguing—will be captured and carried forward to avoid wasted effort and to drive efficient execution of downstream operations. Content creators will explore new ways to capture and hold the highest quality of content metadata by adopting standardized data models such as Entertainment Industry Registry (EIDR). They will also introduce best practices around data interchange and electronic metadata exchange across the content supply chain.

All in all, with a burgeoning number of content hours to be managed, 2020 will see content creators turning towards innovative, holistic supply chain management solutions to enhance efficiencies and lower costs on the back of automation, data analytics and centralization.

Chandar Muthukrishnan is senior vice president, client solutions for Prime Focus Technologies.