NEW YORK -- The Alliance of IP Media Solutions (AIMS) is less than one year out from its formation and founding member Imagine Communications is less than two months on from its first IP interoperability live production test. Now, Imagine’s Chief Product Officer Brick Eksten said the focus has shifted to the next steps.
AIMS, which is now up to about 50 vendors, ran through a number of private IP interoperability trials but IBC was the time to try it out in public.
“Everybody’s bugaboo, everybody’s elephant in the room, was that IP interoperability is OK for file and delivery but not for live production,” Eksten said. “So we said let’s do live production.”
The test included 23 vendors that were included in the live production ecosystem. The live environment that Imagine and AIMS helped setup with all the vendors was used as the IBC Live production facility throughout the show.
“The AIMS booth was just packed. I think it was a seminal moment for a lot of the customers because they saw it was real. It’s not just one vendor hooking their own stuff together. It’s all the major vendors hooked together, showing what live production can do.”
Eksten said that now that IP interoperability has been shown in practice, the focus now turns to configuration and management of systems. In essence, now that the vendors are interoperable, it’s become necessary to be able to operate them all together.
AIMS already had about 60 proofs of concept in the pipe and after IBC it added another 12. “And they’re all major. They’re not just people adding islands of functionality. They’re people looking at greenfield buildouts that are all IP.”
“By and large, people have accepted that it’s not only possible but probable that this is going to happen sooner than later and the next goal is how do I manage operations,” Eksten said.