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The Covid-19 crisis has left a lasting impact on global economy as a whole, and it has also had an impact on almost all industries and markets worldwide.
To discuss the impact of this crisis on enterprise technology, NetEevents in partnership with IDC (International Data Corporation) organized a webinar with several prominent CIOs from leading global tech companies.
One of these CIO’s is GlobalDots’ Shalom Carmel, who offered his insights about the state of Media & Entertainment (M&E) vertical, the trends he noticed, and what key lessons can companies learn from this crisis, and how to adapt to it.
The full list of participants in the panel:
- Duncan Brown – VP of Enterprise Research Europe, IDC
- KA Srinivasan – Co-founder, Amagi
- Shalom Carmel – Chief Information Officer, GlobalDots
- Christophe Nicolas – Senior Vice President Group Chief Information officer, Nagra Kudelski Group
- Dhaval Ponda – Global Head, Media and Entertainment Services, TATA Communications
- An Dang Duy – Chief Information Officer, World Athletics
The webinar discussed how Covid-19 affected gaming and media companies, and which technologies are used by gaming and media companies to adapt to life and work with Covid-19.
The Covid-19 crisis has led to profound changes in the market in the last 9 months: countries around the world are experiencing double-digits decreases in GDP due to lockdowns. According to their survey , 73% of organizations believe that their company rveenue will decline due to Covid-19.
This has also had an impact on digital technologies, but, at the same time, technology is the part of the solution.
Regarding the M&E sector companies, according to IDC, the key considerations are:
- Driving hyper-personalized content and delivery – How are consumers’ behaviors changing? How can I create a more personalized and intimate experiences? How can I leverage data-driven solutions to improve relationship with customers?
- Leveraging new multi-platform approaches and new revenue models – Which capabilities do I need to operate as a digital platform? What are the new monetization opportunities from partners’ ecosystems?
- Developing a long-term hybrid workforce strategy – Do I have in place the right technologies, policies and processes to support a hybrid workplace and at distance content production?
According to An Dang Duy, they have responded and adapted to face the challenges of Covid-19 by short-term, tactical changes by finding ways to make sure their TV experience is uninterrupted by an increase in viewers, or finding ways how to organize their workflows without the ability to travel.
Christope Nicolas noticed that the good news is that M&E sector has been disrupted several times lately (Netflix etc.), so they are used to constant adaptation to new trends and challenges.
Dhaval Ponda says that organizations need to adapt to the fact that the Covid-19 crisis has changed the way people consume content – everything is moving online. For companies in the M&E sector this means that they have to take care of distributed workflows in the cloud, which means that they have to provide secure access to the cloud, not only for their data but also their content.
According to Shalom Carmel, the key lessons organizations can learn from this crisis is that:
- Change is constant – companies have to adapt to the fact that their workforce is going to work remotely for some time, and even after the crisis is over, the remote work will probably stay (although not at the same scale as now).
- People working from home are productive – companies are finding that employees are productive whenever they’re working from, and in the future a lot of companies will shift some of their workforce to remote work permanently.
He emphasized knowledge sharing between CIOs, since they can learn a lot form each other, and the need for adoption of new technologies like Zero trust, SASE, cloud optimization technologies and so on.
Looking towards the future, according to Dhaval Ponda, there are two significant impacts that companies will have to deal with. The first is the type of content that organizations serve their customers. The companies will have to adapt to the changes in their viewership, and they will have to change their content strategy and update their tools.
The second impact is related to moving more and more towards a virtualized environment, which will lead to high standards from audience concerning their viewing experiences.
The trend that we see is that more and more companies in the M&E sector are moving out to cloud, “something”-as-service (IassS, SaaS, PaaS), but if the CIO is not involved in the process properly it will create shadow IT operations.
Things you need to support your new business model:
- You need to find better ways to manage your users, your security, GDPR regulations, privacy and so on.
- Question of expertise – if you start using built-in media solutions for major providers you will suddenly find yourself in chaos of costs. It’s hard to find a budget when you don’t know what your costs will be, you need cost control.
According to Shalom Carmel, another technology is on the verge of disrupting business, and if you don’t use it you are going to lose out, and that’s Kubernetes.
Kubernetes is going to be a major player in M&E sector because you will need it to massively grow your business. Eventually, it will reduce time-to-market and improve your SLA, boosting your bottom line.
To quote Shalom: ”I also see the trend of Kubernetes-of-the shelf – small trend that software vendors will package the delivery of their software as Kubernetes as help charts, essentially they will say do you want to run my new ERP or my new CRM on-premise – no problem, here’s how you do it with Kubernetes.”
The combination of homegrown knowledge and help from external experts to boost that knowledge is critical for companies. It’s also crucial to train customers on how to use new platforms.
Regarding connectivity, Shalom says that there are two issues or goals:
- How to connect your workforce. There’s a spike of interest in solutions like SASE, Zero Trust networks.
- More interest in performance from customers. Experience matters, performance matters, customers are willing to pay more for that, whoever provides the best experience will become the leader.
According to Christophe Nicolas, there are a plenty of sources of inspiration regarding new solutions driving new business models, especially in gaming and esports. He is also thinks that change management will have challenges with training employees and customers on how to use new platforms and technology.
Another important thing to note is security when delivering content. The main thing to do is to secure your origin. People will find ways to make money off your content, we see it all the time. If you want to monetize and expand your content, you have to take it into account.
One of the last questions of the round table discussion was how confident are CIOs that M&E industry will survive and thrive in 2021?
All CIOs agreed that M&E industry will survive this crisis. and to quote Shalom:
“There’s a lot of demand for it, so someone will be there, there will be an M&E industry.”
