System Design as a Function of Technology Strategy - Ascent Media
by Mike Spinks, Principal Consultant
Contents
- Introduction
- The move to a content-centric approach
- Further adoption of open working practices
- The changing role of the CTO
- Technology strategy formulation
- Technical system design
- Summary
Introduction
During this challenging economic period, Media & Entertainment (M&E) companies have been forced to focus not on growth and sustainability, but on survival. Companies that remain competitive will do so by adopting or further developing efficient operational systems to reduce costs and maximize revenues. However, these steps, though required, are not sufficient for long-term viability in a changing media landscape. Companies that that achieve efficiency while positioning for future growth will be best equipped to take advantage of the global economic upturn when it finally arrives.
It is a paradoxical competitive struggle. In the face of reduced revenues, media organizations know that maximizing opportunities to exploit their intellectual property while minimizing the costs associated with acquiring, creating, storing, manipulating, repurposing, and publishing them, is ultimately the key to success.
The economy demands a modular, incremental approach to development that employs process innovation. Wholesale disruptive replacement of systems in a manner that ignores legacy systems and processes is high risk and costly. Approaching development in a planned, modular way reduces risk and disruption. But to design and re-engineer the business to do this requires both an organizational and paradigm shift. The following table outlines examples of approaches that can be taken by media industry groups in the face of the current environment. (Please note that an individual company is likely to be involved in more than one "Industry Activity.")
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An effective defense, while essential, is insufficient; a carefully planned offensive strategy is also required. Companies must be ready to exploit opportunities that arise from the profound changes that we are likely to see in the foundations of the M&E industry:
- Content owners are interested in offering their material as widely as possible and platform owners are searching for the most cost efficient methods of delivery, including web presence, broadband TV channels, on-demand access, and distribution to mobile devices.
- New platforms allow consumers to choose when, how, and where they will consume content, affecting the production and consumption of media. The emergence of local content and the participation of consumers in the creation, selection, and consumption of media will continue to affect supply and demand.
- There is increasing acceleration in the movement from physical to digital assets. Content is being captured, enhanced, edited, stored, and distributed in digital form.
- The media value chain is becoming more complex. Specialization in the value chain is accelerated by convergent technologies in combination with global sourcing, greater attention to differentiated needs of consumers, and improved access to a broader talent base. New players and business models are creating value networks, or value constellations, where money and assets flow in non-traditional ways.
Given these changes, the industry’s collective challenge will be to realize practical creation, acquisition, operational and transactional practices for a sustainable digital media marketplace. Achieving this in a low risk way is essential.
The move to a content-centric approach
It has been well established that a well-integrated managed content environment holds the promise of improved operational and financial performance. As a result, media companies are rapidly adopting file-based digital technologies for the creation, processing, and distribution of content; but they have yet to realize the full potential of an integrated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform.
It is not possible to find one product that satisfies all of a company’s requirements for managing content and harder to find products that integrate with the financial, rights, and performance management systems that control and administer the associated resources. This runs the risk of recreating departmental silos; resulting in the formation of a number of independent, and possibly incompatible, digital islands which limit the realization of the benefits of collaboration and knowledge sharing that the move to digital promises.
The content-centric model enables a number of objectives to be satisfied:
Encourages a planning-based approach, fully integrating strategic management with day-to-day operational management.
- Supports collaboration in the creation of content to enable reuse and repurposing across a number of platforms and services.
- Introduces operational efficiencies in the production, processing, and exploitation of content.
- Improves speed to market for new service offerings.
- Reduces the time and effort required for content logistics.
- Supports the tools required for effective financial forecasting and reporting.
- Provides the basis for enterprise-wide intellectual property rights management.
- Standardizes technologies and processes wherever appropriate to enable efficient deployment, training, operations, support and maintenance.
Further adoption of open working practices
The interaction of heterogeneous systems (both new generation computer-based systems, as well as traditional broadcast equipment) from diverse vendors, especially those supporting closed proprietary standards, creates environments that are difficult to manage and upgrade. This is further exacerbated by tight coupling and brittle software interfaces that often exist between proprietary systems. Even when vendors attempt to solve these interface problems within their own product lines, problems still remain in the integration of one vendor’s systems with those of other vendors. In response to these risks, broadcast engineers and the vendor community are recognizing the need for an overall system software architecture that will reduce the complexity of interaction between new and legacy systems, further extend the longevity of subsystems, and provide a flexible and extensible migration path for new operational subsystems and new media management platforms.
The changing role of the CTO
However, integration of systems is only part of the problem. In general, the approach to applying efficiencies across an enterprise has relied, not just on heavy integration of the various specialist applications, but ultimately a great deal of unwanted disruption to current working practices. Not surprisingly the reaction to the level of organizational and technical change acts as a limiting factor on the degree of success of any transition, and regularly prevents large scale improvement projects from getting off the ground. Managing risk, while realizing value, hinges on the effectiveness of the human element; people have to be flexible and adaptable as well. Too often, technology-based solutions are targeted at issues that actually have more to do with organizational, historical, and political situations that are further complicated by the lack of clear alignment with the overall company’s evolving strategy.
In response to the changing environment and the approach to dealing with it, CEOs, CFOs, and Corporate Boards of media companies are likely to challenge Chief Technology Officers in the way enterprise Chief Information Officers were challenged in the 1980s and 1990s. As information technology became increasingly critical to the success of corporate enterprises, CIOs were challenged to change their role from just "Heads of IT" to valued business contributors and advisors to the CFO and CEO. They were encouraged to become strategic planners and to move IT organizations from cost centers to profit centers. CIOs focused on how the IT organization could contribute to corporate competitive advantage and how it could contribute to the critical success factors of the overall business. Likewise, leaders of the M&E industry are asking CTOs, not only to focus on efficiency and cost reduction, but to also use the power of technology as an enabling force for new businesses, new markets, new revenue streams, and organizational transformation in a proactive manner. There are a number of tools that can help the CTO deal with this remit, the most critical is a clearly defined and communicated Technology Strategy.
Technology strategy formulation
Technology strategy must guide, and be influenced by, the processes, people and technical systems that the enterprise exploits. One useful approach is to base the strategy formulation on functional design. Simply put, what must the enterprise do in order to create the products or services that will satisfy its customers and partners; and hence thrive.The technology strategy is formulated through defining, and iteratively refining, the set of functional and non-functional requirements that any investment, in infrastructure or organizational change, must satisfy to be deemed successful. Process modeling can be used to analyze and document the approach while providing an efficient method for communicating complex situations to multi-disciplined teams. A major by-product of employing this functionality-based approach is that it begins to prepare the groundwork for organizational change by enabling the creation of a number of complementary sets of requirements to fulfill the strategy.
- Technical systems
- Operational systems
- Support systems
- Human resource systems
- Training systems
- Organizational structures
- Buildings and facilities
It is therefore possible to achieve a clear picture of the full extent of any transition and the degree of change management required.
Technical system design
Technical system design should not occur before strategy formulation and functional definition and must be based on satisfying a number of key criteria which are consistent with the technology strategy of the enterprise.
- Understanding the functional and non-functional requirements of the systems: addressing what the system has to do, its expected performance and how it fits into the bigger picture.
- Understanding the need to adapt and change the system over time: including the well understood rapid change of the implementation phase and the long term, less understood, changes which occur as the products and services offered by the media enterprise are adapted for the market.
- Understanding the external forces which predict or prescribe an enterprise’s interaction with the outside world: regulatory governance, etc.
- Understanding the inter-dependencies between systems and how they interact to satisfy the technology strategy of the enterprise.
- Understanding the real world constraints of business plans and associated deadlines, while managing risk, cost, and time appropriately.
- Applying a world-view of best practices and innovation achieved through global exposure to systems and techniques, active research, and membership of industry bodies.
- Applying open standards wherever possible to efficiently take advantage of new technologies and techniques and to enable effective ongoing support and maintenance.
Summary
Media enterprises are not static entities. The survival and sustainability of an organization depends on a built-in capability to effectively cope with, or lead, changes in the environment. Flexibility in developing the key systems that support the enterprise is critical and strategic.
A key factor is planning for the ability to add, modify, or drop products or services as the next "game changing" innovation comes along. The growing pace of change and uncertainty further drives this need for flexibility in system design. The role of the CTO, supported by clearly defined and communicated technology strategies, must also adapt to meet these challenges.
The term "Future-proof" is always misused; how can it be possible to fully predict the developments and trends that will affect our industry? While no one really knows what the future will hold, we should, as far as possible, not preclude future development and sustainability because of decisions made in the present.
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