SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI, a cloud-native media supply chain platform provider, has tapped Simon Eldridge as chief operating officer, a new post overseeing all functions except for finance and accounting.

Eldridge, one of the company’s three co-founders, had been chief product officer and will continue to report to chairman and CEO Larry Kaplan. Succeeding Eldridge in the chief product officer role is Chris Brähler, formerly vice president of product.

“Simon has been an invaluable leader for the company since day one, and I am delighted to elevate his role to chief operating officer,” Kaplan said. “In this new role, he will focus on driving operational execution across all our key functions, including engineering, sales, marketing and customer success.”

With his promotion, Brähler will continue to drive SDVI’s product strategy and execution, the company said. He will continue to own the product road map and will work closely with customers and the company’s solutions team to define new product requirements, SDVI said.

“As I move into my new role, I’m excited to be able to promote Chris into the chief product officer position,” Eldridge said. “I’ve worked extremely closely with Chris for several years to make the Rally platform into the market leader it is today. I couldn’t imagine anyone more capable and deserving of taking the reins on this important position for the company.”

More information about SDVI and its Rally media supply chain management platform is available at the company’s website.

LAS VEGAS—TV Technology asked a cross-section of NAB Show-goers a series of five questions regarding what they considered the main themes, evidence of those, whether or not these initiatives will take hold, and what promising technologies from past NAB Shows did not see daylight. (A complete list of quotes from respondents and links to their full 5Qs is at “NAB 2016 in 21 Quotes.”)

Simon Eldridge, chief product officer at SDVI:
Q1. How many NAB Shows have you attended?
S.E. 2016 was my 16th straight.

Q2. What, in your opinion, were the main themes of the show this year?
S.E. Content supply chains, cloud migration, IP.

Q3. What were some examples of these themes?
S.E. AIMS, the growing presence of cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft), IP production everywhere, and every software vendor providing ‘cloud’ versions, or at least the ability to be virtualized—this is now a must have checklist item.

Q4. Do you foresee any or all of these technologies or initiatives taking hold?
S.E. I believe that ultimately the transition to IP instead of SDI is a short-term solution that will ultimately be replaced by completely hybrid cloud solutions. Standardization in this area is critical in the short term. I also believe that the notion of migrating the media business to that of a content supply chain (industrialization) will dramatically increase the ability to make intelligent, informed business decisions, which has not always been the case.

Q5. What technology that impressed you most at a past show didn't see the light of day?
S.E. AI production. There are still glimpses in to this area, but it’s not yet been fully realized.