As Asia Pacific’s broadcast, media and entertainment market comes out of Covid-19, things are changing. The industry finds itself in transition as it contends with changing consumer preferences and technology shifts.
At an event organised by Ideal Systems and Comcast Technology Solutions [CTS], this transition was discussed and dissected with a focus on finding the best way to chart a course forward towards successful outcomes for all parties.
The core message could be summarised in a simple statement made by Bart Spriester, GM and VP, content and streaming provider suite, CTS: “Comcast runs on Comcast.”
To elaborate, Comcast invests millions of dollars in technology research and development to ensure that its services and platforms have the edge in the market. Through Comcast Technology Solutions these investments are made available for others to leverage.
Comcast Technology Solutions and Ideal Systems have entered a strategic alliance and under the new agreement, Ideal Systems will serve as a strategic reseller of Comcast Technology Solutions’ CTSuite portfolio of products and services for the Asia Pacific region.
The discussion highlighted specific trends and factors that are shaping the broadcast, media and entertainment sectors. Streaming and its rising prominence will continue to transform and grow the market. In particular, the next transformation will centre around the monetisation models adopted by streaming platforms which might be ready for change. In parallel to the rise of streaming, re-aggregation is expected to be the key battleground moving forward.
According to Fintan Mc Kiernan, CEO Southeast Asia for Ideal Systems, it is time for the industry to move forward: “There is a place for baseband infrastructure, and I am not saying that it is going to disappear. But there is a need to move forward to keep pace with how the market and the consumer is changing and that means that you have to start looking at moving to the cloud, machine learning and AI. Over the last few years, we have been investing in the cloud, building our own cloud division and our own cloud team and this is because we believe this is the future.”
Mc Kiernan believes that the case for taking the next technological step is obvious. He said: “It’s does not have to be technology for technology’s sake. But there is clear evidence that moving to the cloud can push your business forward, it can drive down costs, increase productivity and automate processes. It can provide scalability and flexibility. And in the world of broadcast, where you are under pressure and competing with the likes of Google and Facebook now for advertising revenue and competing with Netflix and Disney+ for subscriber revenue you have to take every advantage you can get."
With the expertise that Ideal Systems has in the Southeast Asia and APAC region, armed with the extensive suite of solutions CTS has to offer, Mc Kiernan believes that Ideal Systems is ready to help the industry take the next steps.
He concluded: “The timing is perfect. I think the engineering departments of Asian broadcasters have been ‘unleashed’ during the Covid times and they have been given the liberty to experiment and do something different because they had to in order to combat disruption. At the same time, many of the technologies for cloud and AI, are up and running as seen by the CTS suite of solutions. So the changes in the broadcast, media and entertainment industry have been catalysed and the might come quicker than you think.”