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Telco TV to drive video server markets
1 April 2010After a slow start, telco TV is now growing quickly as it is in the rest of the industrialised world. As the latecomer to the television distribution game, telco TV has the advantage of employing the most current technology and the least legacy infrastructure. This, in part, explains the stronger growth in this segment. The hardware side of the equation is largely commoditised; vendors aim for differentiation via the accompanying software applications.
Most video server vendors address at least two out of these three markets, and increasingly their goal is to offer an end-to-end platform. This plays to the advantage of some of the newer, larger, entrants to the market, such as Cisco, Sun, Motorola and Arris. They have the resources to fit these servers into larger, more comprehensive solutions.
The broadcast, cable, and telco TV segments of worldwide video server markets are all growing at a healthy pace, and total revenues are expected to reach $1.5 billion in 2013. Of the three, the telco TV market is showing the strongest growth, with a compound annual growth rate of 28 percent over 2007-2013. Cable will experience a CAGR of about 13.5 percent, while broadcast markets show the slowest growth at eight percent.
Cable, broadcast and telco TV are all highly competitive markets for video servers, according to ABI Research. Cable and broadcast are the more traditional modes of entertainment for consumers, but cable providers and telcos have been quicker to adapt to market trends and to offer innovative consumer services.
Broadcast segments have tried its hand at hybrid deployments and similar initiatives to remain competitive. A new study from ABI Research, “Video Server Market Analysis” shows trends in the video server market, identifies market drivers and inhibitors, and profiles key players and their product offerings in the cable, telco and broadcast segments. Market share and pricing trend data are accompanied by regional and market segment forecasts.
A long-time provider of network storage infrastructures that support streamlined end-to-end workflows, SAN Solutions has met this need through provision of open-standard, non-proprietary solutions that enable many once-linear, sequential processes to be performed simultaneously on servers running application services ranging from ingest to transcoding to playout.
“TV and film facilities today are finding that a shared media workflow is critical to their efficiency, productivity and consistency in creating and delivering content. By incorporating this functionality into its storage infrastructures, SAN Solutions gives customers across the industry more creative flexibility and more powerful tools for reaching their business goals,” according to Harry Aine, president and CEO of SAN Solutions.
“One example of a performance-optimized server appliance developed by SAN Solutions leverages Solid-State Drive technology and Xeon Nehalem CPU technology, tailored to run the RadiantGrid Platform v5.0 software along embedded Linear Acoustic AEROMAX processing.”
“Together, these best-of-breed solutions not only address the interoperability constraints that frequently arise between disparate broadcast and production platforms, but also take a holistic approach in solving the complicated problems surrounding content preparation, media transformation, metadata management, and digital distribution,” said Aine.
“In addition to enabling advanced processing within the storage infrastructure, this advanced appliance ensures reliable operation, supported by a ‘call home’ function linked to SAN Solutions’ worldwide network operation center for early problem detection, analysis, and quick support response.”
