In Broadcast - March 2015 - 64

64

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 3 | March 2015

InForm

Media Asset Management Today
For years, manufacturers and systems integrators have awaited the moment that Media Asset
Management would go mainstream. Contributing Editor Kieron Seth ponders if 2015 will be the
year of MAM...

S

am Bogoch the CEO of Axle
Video says it appears that
"demand
for
enterprise-level
systems is signiﬁcant but may
be tapering off, as most large
broadcasters generally have these
systems in place already."
While he is more positive about
growth within the midrange of the
market, he is buoyant about his
own company's fortunes.
"We are targeting a different
segment,
namely
small
workgroups who are implementing
media management for the ﬁrst
time (and often, shared storage
with it). We are experiencing very
rapid growth in this segment, and
our unit sales are growing in the
high double digits."
He goes on to say bullishly:
"We believe MAM technology is
maturing rapidly, and increasingly
able to tackle the needs of small
and midsize customers as a
routine software installation rather
than custom deployments, at price
points between 1-10,000 dollars/
Euros."
How does this assessment of
the market match with the more
established players, addressing
the higher echelon of the industry?
"Demand for asset management
remains strong and is a big
component of Avid Everywhere,
our strategic vision for the future
of the media and entertainment
industry," comments Craig Dwyer,
Senior Director, Global Centre
of Excellence at Avid. "At NAB
in 2014, we introduced the ﬁrst
phase of Avid Everywhere with
the introduction of the Avid
MediaCentral Platform and a set
of modular application suites that
together represent the most open

integrated and ﬂexible media
production
and
distribution
environment in the industry."
Clearly the sector is still in a stage
of active development.
Parham Azimi, CEO and CoFounder of Cantemo again
identiﬁes reasons for optimism:
"The demand for MAM is great, but
arguably the need is greater and
growing as the media landscape
evolves. For a long time the MAM
market has been dominated by
large enterprise solutions derived
from the broadcast world.
"The focus, by necessity, has
been on the comparatively
narrow needs of that industry. As
we see new types of companies
emerge with numerous vertical
opportunities, the media lifecycle
is different and the requirements
for
MAM
solutions
varies
dramatically between industries
and from company to company."
What
is
apparent
is
an
industry that is very much in the
development stage, both in terms
of the readiness of customers
to purchase a solution and the
maturity of the technology itself.
A common thread among the
manufacturers is a sense that not
all parts of the market are equally
well served.
Take Archiware's assessment
that "there is still a lack of
really simple solutions also and
especially for the entry level
market," according to their
Business Development Manager,
Marc Batschkus. Yet, this is the
very space into which Metus
has recently launched its new
MediaCube product: this is a
market sector in a state of ﬂux,
striving hard to position itself.

Avid Interplay Media Asset Management

The Cloud
A question to be considered is
whether MAM systems designed
for a handful of local users
share any common ground with
installations such as the Avid
MediaCentral Platform project
at CBC/Radio-Canada, where its
implementation now automates
processes for the organisation's

Archiware's P5 asset solutions

mobile applications, websites,
132 radio stations, 27 television
stations, and foreign bureaus, in
both English and French.
For example, cloud applications
have a very high proﬁle at
broadcast
trade
shows;
is
this a common area for MAM
development?
Avid's Dwyer says: "Avid Cloud
technologies are having an impact
on Media Asset Management and
enterprise media systems, but
there are a number of aspects that
need to be considered carefully for
the business case.
"Clients are looking carefully
at the economics of cloud
conﬁgurations, but often have
difﬁculty understanding the true
cost of their in-house systems.
What makes this more challenging
is that often the cost of supporting
the in-house systems is blended
across many different businesses
and technologies and it's harder
to identify where the savings will
come from and how they will be
actually realised.
"All that said, we continue to see
clients using a mix of systems in
a hybrid conﬁguration; perhaps
beneﬁting from the cloud for
elastic transcoding services or
storage, but relying on on-premise
systems for systems for realtime operations that are close to
on-air."
Other
vendors,
potentially
working on smaller projects are
more cautious, citing concerns
over
complexity,
bandwidth
limitations and security as issues
hampering cloud implementations.
Indeed, security is a particular
focus for all vendors. Cantemo,

for example, places utmost
importance on data protection.
Azimi notes: "We're seeing
a push towards hybrid cloud
solutions, in which media ﬁles
are stored both locally and in
the cloud. Increasingly we're
seeing
workforces
that
are
dispersed around the globe.
This is not always for our largest
customers either. Tools that
can accommodate the cloud
are able to provide services
without concern for location. The
MAM will be responsible for the
management of all that media
and we will be responsible for the
algorithms that ensure content is
available in the right place, at the
right time and in the right format."

"Demand for asset
management remains
strong..."
Craig Dwyer, Avid

Security
"We take great [care] with Portal
[to] make sure we support the
latest web security standards
to protect the system. We also
provide
customers
granular
control of their content via Access
Control Lists. Restrictions can be
deﬁned around content-type and
item metadata. These can then
be dynamically updated to follow
speciﬁc business logic and used
to determine who is able to see
content and how they can interact
with it throughout the entire media
lifecycle," comments Cantemo's
Azimi.
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