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NAB 2022: Ateliere, AWS, RSG Media, PacketFabric Show Off Advances

LAS VEGAS — With nearly 53,000 attendees back for the first live NAB Show since the start of the pandemic, MESA member companies brought new solutions for content licensing, content protection, cloud services and more to Vegas.

Here’s a brief look at what some of the companies had to share:

Ateliere Creative Technologies

Ateliere and its COO Bill Admans used NAB to debut Connect/Parcel, a new, targeted product powered by Ateliere Connect’s cloud-native digital supply chain platform, one designed to simplify the workflow for packaging and delivering content.

Aimed at customers with lower-scale content delivery requirements looking to operate and manage their own media delivery, saving time and money. Ateliere Connect/Parcel builds on the Ateliere Connect platform’s recently announced support for Apple iTunes packages via Apple Transporter using the ITMSP format and is indicative of Ateliere Connect’s evolution into a “truly modular” SaaS platform, one that grows and scales with customers as it finds new ways to manage, distribute, and monetise their content.

“At NAB we’re showing how we’re constantly updating for the media supply chain, offering new enhancements, particularly with Apple,” Admans said. “Ateliere Connect/Parcel simplifies and automates delivery and is especially for customers that don’t have large requirements to be able to do packages and deliver services in a simple and automated way.”

Connect/Parcel enables customers to deliver content in three clicks (upload content, select destination, QC and deliver), and the simplified workflow integration with Apple allows users to populate a minimum set of requirements through a pre-formatted CSV file. Once the content is uploaded with a CSV file, Connect/Parcel validates the media and metadata before delivering the content, removing the burden of performing the necessary checks to ensure all assets and metadata are correctly formatted.

Ateliere plans to expand Connect/Parcel to support simplified workflows for all major digital platforms.

Amazon Web Services

It was a year ago when Amazon Web Services (AWS) made industrywide waves with the launch of AWS for Media & Entertainment, an initiative geared toward making it easier for media and entertainment customers to discover, implement and deploy purpose-built AWS capabilities and partner solutions.

Built specifically for content creators, rights holders, producers, broadcasters and distributors, AWS for Media & Entertainment features a host services and solutions from AWS and its technology partners, aligning purpose-built cloud offerings — including nine AWS services, 11 AWS solutions, dedicated AWS appliances, and more than 400 AWS partner offerings —covering specific M&E solution areas, including content production, media supply chain and archive, broadcast, D2C and streaming, and data science and analytics.

At NAB Show 2022, Marc Aldrich, GM of global media and entertainment for AWS, was all smiles when talking about how it’s been received in the last year.

“When we started building services, customers said they love our tools, but needed greater solutions that focused on specific areas of the industry, like D2C and data science,” he said. “With the partnerships we’ve made, we were able to deliver what the industry needed.

“We’re having conversations now that we weren’t having two years ago.”

And with the avalanche of virtual productions rolling during the pandemic, Antony Passemard, director and GM of AWS’s Creative Tools division, said the company struck while the iron was hot with the debut of Amazon Nimble Studio, a suite of tools that enables customers to produce content entirely in the cloud, and create a functional creative studio in hours, remotely, with little in the way of capital expenditure.

The rendering-on-demand solution allows customers to quickly onboard and collaborate with artists from anywhere, produce content faster (and more cheaply), and requires no upfront fees or commitments, with customers only paying for the underlying AWS services used. AWS Elemental MediaPackage, AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaLive, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental MediaStore, AWS Elemental MediaTailor and Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) are all folded in.

“All of this original content demands these solutions, because in essence you’re creating 10 to 12 hour-long movies on a short schedule,” Passemard said. “It’s a megatrend pushing virtual production to be there.”

Samira Bakhtiar, director of global media and entertainment for AWS, said the company’s ability to layer on AI and ML and metadata services, offer content owners more control with D2C offerings, and simplify their media supply chains, “creates opportunities for distributors to get to market a lot faster in the cloud.”

RSG Media

RSG Media made waves at NAB with the debut of RSG Rights v4, touting it as the only comprehensive rights and rights finance system for media, entertainment, and licensing industries. Featuring a combination of both content and merchandising rights, the system brings together rights and rights finance, programming, talent payments, and real-time avails reporting.

RSG Media’s rights management solution aims to enable media entertainment and licensing companies with the ability to pinpoint what they can do to fully exploit the rights of what they own, handling all aspects of content and brand licensing in one system, providing full understanding of each asset’s value and opportunities, from movies to merchandise to NFTs.

“Rights v4 is critical as companies go through M&A, spin up new services, launch new platforms, such as SVOD or FAST, and enter other new lines of business, such as NFTs and digital merchandise,” Mukesh Sehgal, president and GM at RSG Media, said in a statement. “They need a comprehensive system that lets them know what they have to use or sell across every opportunity. That is the only way they can maximise their value-chain.

“RSG Rights v4 provides our customers with critical actionable information in real-time. By automating rights management and rights finance, companies no longer need to worry about an overwhelming sea of options and can identify what viewers want before they know it. It also gives Finance the chart-of-accounts insight they need to identify new and missed opportunities—to hold the organisation accountable.”

RSG Rights prides itself for acting as a sub-ledger for major enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, allowing companies to fill in critical missing media and licensing functionality, enabling finance groups to automate monthly, quarterly, and annual closes. And when combined with RSG Audience, the company’s machine learning technology, clients can utilise predictive and prescriptive analytics to further discover ways to grow their business.

PacketFabric

PacketFabric came out of NAB with a new partnership, announcing shortly after the show that it had partnered with managed network service provider Unitas Global, with the two networking platforms integrating technology to bolster network bandwidth capacity, extend software defined network (SDN) to the edge, and add new cloud access points. The partnership means significant expansion opportunities for both next generation networking platforms and creates a global SDN solution aimed at helping enterprises fulfil their connectivity needs.

The companies plan to expand and overlay PoPs to each other’s locations. Network interconnections at 100-plus shared POPs worldwide will mean further platform integration, simplifying on-demand connectivity to cloud infrastructures and optimising data movement, the companies said in a statement.

Unitas Global will point demand from enterprises toward PacketFabric’s middle mile and cloud connectivity services via Unitas Nexus, the company’s automated design and pricing platform. PacketFabric in turn will expand customer connectivity options through its on-demand portal with Unitas Reach connectivity services, including last-mile access to 50 million-plus enterprise locations.

“PacketFabric and Unitas Global together are a slam-dunk for software-defined WAN connectivity,” said PacketFabric CEO Dave Ward said in a press release. “Integrating our respective network footprints, platforms, and solution offerings creates tremendous opportunities for multi-national Enterprises who are looking to build their digital businesses around a hybrid and multi-cloud core.”

Patrick Shutt, CEO of Unitas Global, added: “Enabling customers to simplify and consume complex connectivity solutions is our mission. The expanded interconnection of our networks and platform technologies with PacketFabric further extends the edge of software defined services out to the enterprise, creating an unmatched edge to everywhere offering to support customers globally.”