10
NEWS & VIEWS
Digitisation will
be a key weapon
for incumbents
in the battle
against OTT
Sam
Willoughby,
Director,
Professional
Service, APAC,
ARRIS
the operator with ongoing benefits,
the real win here is that it proves that
video-specific networks, with their spe-
cialised requirements and equipment,
can be abstracted for use in automation
platforms.
Now, the operator has a network
inventory model built that it can lever-
age to automate further business use
cases, which will continue to improve
the customer experience and have a
positive impact on both capital and
operational expenditures.
This really is the key. Once parts
of the business have been abstracted
into a model, there is no limitation to
what can be automated, and business
is well on the path towards digital
transformation.
Closed loop automation can be
used to perform assurance activities
on the network, improving fault reso-
lution time and customer experience
while reducing operational headcount
and cost. Defined engineering rules
and capacity management functions
can be automated so they are per-
formed in an agile manner, the same
way Amazon spins hundreds of thou-
sands of VM’s per day up and down just
to satisfy peaks in McDonald’s orders
through uberEats.
Zero touch fulfilment of service
orders can be offered across the whole
product range, and the new services
enabled almost immediately.
By deploying the same automation
technologies as OTT providers, service
providers will themselves transform
into digital businesses, capable of
managing their infrastructure in an au-
tomated manner — at greatly reduced
cost and with greater efficiencies. There
is a paradigm shift occurring within
service providers as they transition to
cloud optimised, digital businesses.
While content remains king, the
new line heard on the battle field is: If
you can’t beat them, join them. q
Digital Media Rights
different verticals
Headquartered in New
York, Digital Media Rights
(DMR) is a digital media
and advertising company whose portfolio spans
three different areas — content distribution, digital
advertising, and over-the-top (OTT) publishing.
APB prompts Will Chao, vice-president of product
development and programming, DMR, on how the
company manages each vertical while journeying
through the increasingly digital media and
entertainment space.
Since its founding in 2010, Digital Media
Rights (DMR) has embarked on a different
journey to make its mark in the media and
entertainment industry, starting from its
base in New York, USA. Unlike traditional
media players, DMR positions itself as
a premiere digital media and advertis-
ing company with its portfolio spanning
three key areas — content distribution,
digital advertising, and over-the-top (OTT)
publishing.
As a global distributor of featured films,
TV programmes and documentaries, DMR
has sealed direct distribution deals with
several digital platforms, including Netf-
lix, Hulu, Amazon, Comcast, Google Play,
Vudu, and many others. To date, DMR has
acquired and distributed over 7,500 titles
from more than 300 partners across film
studios, TV networks, production compa-
nies and sales agents.
In February this year, DMR inked a
five-year, non-exclusive deal with BidSlate,
a global content distribution platform. The
agreement covers distribution of five films,
including two documentaries — Dukale’s
Dream, which stars Hugh Jackman with an
Ethiopia coffee grower named Dukale; and
Nerd Prom: Inside Washington’s Wildest
Week, which peeks into the White House
Correspondents’ Association’s annual din-
ner and the surrounding hoopla.
The films are avail-
able across a number of digital platforms,
including Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant
Video, Hulu, Pluto TV, TubiTV, Google Play,
FandangoNow, Vudu, Kanopy, Overdrive,
and on cable video-on-demand (VoD). In
addition, the films are also distributed across
all five of DMR’s OTT channels.
As for DMR’s digital advertising arm, the
unit manages advertising sales of video and
display inventory via partnerships with OTT,
desktop and mobile publishers. For instance,
DMR is currently operating and representing
some of the leading channels across devices
such as Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.
According to DMR, its publishing partner-
ships yield more than 100 million impres-
sions per month with an average completion
rate of over 95%.
Will Chao, vice-president of product
development and programming, DMR,
told APB: “DMR’s core competencies in-
clude digital distribution, publishing and
advertising. The digital media space is the
most exciting puzzle in the entertainment
industry. We have been in the distribution
and publishing business for a few years now,
and we see that the industry is maturing.
“As more and more users adopt OTT
and streaming, the advertising business will
usher in the next big change in digital con-
sumption. We expect to see more advertis-
ing video-on-demand (AVoD) offerings in
the market space.”
Content is King has been the battle
cry of service providers as they com-
pete for eyeballs against over-the-top
(OTT) disrupters. The results speak
for themselves, however, as OTT pro-
viders continue to take revenue away
from the service providers, using the
very same access infrastructure the
incumbents own and operate. They
must be doing something right. Being
a product of the digital age, OTT has
the advantage of being fully digital, and
born in the cloud.
The telecom industry is beginning
to embrace these new technologies,
with global powerhouses such as
Orange and AT&T committing to a
digital business transformation initia-
tive, largely powered by open source
platforms such as ONAP (Open Net-
work Automation Platform).
Within the Asia-Pacific region,
MyRepublic is deploying the TMFo-
rum Zero Touch Provisioning frame-
work for its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)
network, and Telstra has its NE2020
initiative to simplify product offerings
and focus on customer experience.
But will these digital transformation
principles work with communications
service providers and video networks?
ARRIS recently helped a tier-one
operator in the region with digital
transformation automate an order-
to-activate process for its enterprise
media contribution networks. The goal
was to fully automate the provisioning
of an itinerant network link service,
removing all human intervention.
First, the operator’s media network
assets were abstracted into a model
using ONAP’s Active and Available In-
ventory component. Once completed,
custom microservices were developed
that interface to ScheduleAll, down-
load the customer service booking
data, design a service that would meet
the customers’ requirements, and pro-
vision it in the production network.
The solution was tested success-
fully and now operates in production,
where it delivers operational benefits
by removing the swivel chair hu-
man interaction in the provisioning
process, and dramatically reducing
service provisioning times. While the
success of this use case is providing
November 2018
The entrance of the Internet into the video space has resulted in the shift in audience viewing
habits, and was one of the reasons which prompted DMR to launch its OTT channels in order to
better cater to viewers in the digital space.