Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) @ConnecTechAsia Show News - Day 2 | Page 13

@ConnecTechAsia2018
www.apb-news.com
27 June 2018
WEDNESDAY 13
Microservices: What
are they, and why are
they important?
BY JASON LI
One of the hottest topics of the
moment is microservices. What are
they, and why are they important?
Just a few years ago, if you want-
ed to build a system, you bought a set
of devices with labels such as server,
switcher, transcoder, standards con-
verter and so on. You plugged them
together, and the system did precisely
what you designed it to do — even if
it would not do much else.
Today, we have moved from
large discrete devices to software
applications running on commercial
off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. These
software applications can be trans-
formed into “virtual machines” inside
the IT environment, which is why we
talk about virtualisation.
But if we were just to replace a
hardware standards converter or
transcoder with a software equiv-
alent, we would not really have
achieved very much. Certainly, our
systems would be no more flexible.
The smart thinking, then, is to
make the devices smaller and more
focused. Instead of a box labelled
“transcoder” — which might be able
to convert many different codecs
and wrappers between inputs and
outputs — we can make each part
of the process a separate application.
We might have a need to bring
in a contribution feed which is in
progressive JPEG2000. A traditional
transcoder would include other input
codecs and a de-interlacer, which we
would have paid for, and which would
be consuming power even though
they would not be in the signal path.
But in a software-defined archi-
tecture, we just install and use the
JPEG2000 input codec — nothing
else. That is a microservice. It is a
piece of software that does just one
thing. When we need it, we run it up.
It does not waste processor cycles
or energy. And the moment we are
finished with it, it disappears.
Microservices bring flexibility, agility
and economy. It is the architecture of
the future — and it is available today,
says Imagine Communications, who is
exhibiting with Broadcast Engineering
Services (booth 6F3-04) and Broadcast
Technology (booth 4T1-01).
If one day a feed comes in as
H.264 rather than JPEG2000, then
all you need do is call up a different
codec microservice and the workflow
will work perfectly.
Even better, if the commercial
department says it would be great if
we could deliver this programme in
4K/Ultra HD (UHD), you change a cou-
ple of parameters in a look-up table
and it becomes a 4K/UHD system.
There is no need for expensive capital
investments: you can do trial services
and pop-ups at little or no cost.
Microservices open up the pos-
sibility of new licencing models. You
could pay for functionality only when
you use it. If you need, say, a 3D
character generator for an hour a day,
find a vendor who will license you a
graphics microservice by the hour.
Finally, you can develop your
own microservices, to operate inside
a wider workflow environment like
the Zenium framework from Imagine
Communications. These discrete
software components can be put
together to quickly implement new
blueprints, and because they are
completely self-contained, you can
introduce them into a system without
worrying about the impact on the
rest of the architecture.
Microservices bring flexibility, agili-
ty and economy. It is the architecture of
the future — and it is available today.
Jason Li is sales director, Asia-Pacific, Imagine
Communications.
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