In Broadcast - July 2020 - 24

24

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 10 - Issue 7 | July 2020

InReply

Monitoring a Maturing
OTT Content Market
Qligent CEO Brick Eksten discusses the move toward direct-to-consumer
delivery models for content, and how this has led to Qligent's
flexible Dymos QoS monitoring solution...
InBroadcast: Can you give us
a brief overview of what we can
expect in the next few months
within your sector?
Brick Eksten: Our customers will
make more aggressive moves toward
direct-to-consumer delivery models
over the next year. We base this off
feedback from our larger partners,
and discussions with many of our
smaller partners and end customers.
Our response is to bridge these
diverse distribution topologies so that
we help our customers deliver these
consumer experiences. That means a
stronger focus on OTT and the various
associated formats, and stronger
penetration of monitoring points
across the network. We are working
with select customers to monitor
signals, content and performance
all the way to the customer. Our
mission is a true end-to-end picture
of the quality of experience from the
consumer experience.
InB: Can you explain the benefits
in regard to recent announcement
on Dymos?
BE: Dymos™ is our latest product
and service offering, and it represents
a new direction for Qligent that
also leverages our core capabilities.
We developed Dymos in response
to a market need, which is greater
alignment between costs and content
delivery.
The market is seeing a proliferation
of popup channels, speciality channels,
and specialty events. One of the many
hurdles our customers face is how

Monitor buffering and latency

Dymos offers on demand monitoring of events

to propagate a monitoring service
in parallel with these high-value live
events? We developed Dymos, an
on-demand monitoring solution, to
specifically address these emerging
needs.
The customer benefits because
Dymos-associated
costs
are
specifically aligned to the event. They
are not overpaying for permanent
infrastructure, and they do not have to
pre-engineer the solution. Dymos is an
off-the-shelf, on-demand, end-to-end
solution that our customers can sign
into and immediately leverage.
InB: What challenges did you face
when launching the solution?
BE: We needed to ensure quality
user experiences. That includes
making sure that Dymos was
accessible and available, and that it
aligned with customer expectations
around managing their on-demand
services. Every Dymos customer will

be different to some degree, and we
had to make sure it can integrate into
unique orchestration layers. It needs
to be a seamless part of the customer's
deployment plans which means
that we have to match their internal
targets for time to service, deployment
topology, and scale.
InB: Which territories do you think
will show particular interest?
BE: Dymos is a product line that is
positioned as a type of service. The
question becomes which territories
accelerate quicker toward direct-toconsumer models or OTT services.
I think there is a simple answer: It
will be everywhere. Some regions
face greater network and bandwidth
challenges,
along
with
slower
consumer uptake. However, it is only
a matter of time before all regions
expect greater access to on-demand
content. There is no escaping that
consumers want to consume what they
want, when they want and where they
want. The demand continues to rise
across all territories, demographics,
and content genres.
InB: Any innovations ahead that
you can discuss?
BE: Qligent's products are primarily
designed to watch the content and
supply chain so that our customers can
focus on their business. We help our
customers identify and resolve issues
within the content and throughout

the supply chain which brings
tremendous efficiencies to the overall
management of content delivery.
Our customers are asking for more
data that covers a broader spectrum
of systems involved in the supply
chain. Quality of experience is about
more than the signal and the content.
Quality is an outcome of a supply
chain that spans complex topologies
of networks, compute and services
and there is a need for monitoring
across the entire supply chain to
ensure that our customers can quickly
identify problems or opportunities and
respond accordingly.
As our customers become more
sophisticated with their delivery
strategies, we see our role evolving
to stay just ahead of the customers'
needs. Ultimately this means aligning
our development roadmaps to the
distribution needs of the customers
and the increasing demand for more
visibility across their network.
InB: Can you advise on your ideal
market for this product / service?
BE: The market conditions ultimately
influence those decisions, and we
continue to see traditional media
companies making moves that make
them more competitive in the OTT
content delivery space. Until recently,
OTT was viewed as something a
broadcaster wanted to do but didn't
have to do. That was also challenged
by the different revenue and business
models that come with the territory.
As the market matures and those
business models resolve into more
repeatable patterns, we will see
greater uptake of these OTT services,
and also learn to embrace nextgeneration distribution models such
as ATSC 3.0 and 5G networks. We
believe that the number, breadth,
and types of video services will only
increase in time as the market learns
to embrace the opportunity to reach
more audience.
InB: Thank you for taking the time
to discuss these points.
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In Broadcast - July 2020

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