Sony Media Solutions Division To Provide Next-Gen Cloud, Software Workflows for Media Professionals

Sony is focusing its media workflow solutions under one organization within its Professional Solutions Americas (PSA) group. The Media Solutions Division combines many of Sony’s technology resources designed to help media customers maximize and monetize content distribution, as well as drive efficiencies at every stage of the media production lifecycle — from content acquisition to distribution to archive.

Based on an organization’s unique needs, the use of one or several of Sony’s solutions can help streamline and automate workflows, freeing creative professionals from redundant or administrative tasks so they can focus on creating and monetizing compelling content. These solutions can also deliver budgetary relief, providing services that otherwise tie up capital and operating expenses.

“Media customers are faced with more challenges than ever before,” says John Studdert, VP of the Media Solutions Division. “They need to deliver ‘anytime, anywhere’ to the ever increasing number of distribution platforms. The challenge our customers are faced with is to do all of this efficiently, effectively, with high quality, and with the same amount of people or, in many cases, fewer resources. At the same time, they need to reduce costs and eliminate redundancies. What we’re able to do now is provide a variety of solutions to meet the specific needs of our customers using our cloud and software solutions with a high degree of agility.”

Studdert noted the new group recognizes even the definition of “media customer” has changed, expanding to include not only traditional broadcasters or production companies, but also multi-channel networks, OTT producers and VOD services, telecommunication brands, and more.

This is the latest example of Sony’s efforts to continually expand its professional solutions offerings, enhancing and developing options for real-time and non-real-time production such as XDCAM air, Media Backbone Hive, Media Backbone Navigator X, Memnon digitization, and the Ci cloud platform. Sony acquired Crispin Corporation in April, adding master control automation and asset management, and the recent addition of Ven.ue to the PSA family adds OTT and cloud-based content distribution and management capabilities.

Sony solutions technologies are already helping customers achieve their goals. Since 2014, together with its partners and newly acquired Crispin, Sony has been running 24/7 master control for PBS through its Public Media Management cloud-based service. The PMM service addresses unique needs of local stations such as archiving content to the cloud or localized branding, and continues to sign on more stations.

In addition to its foundation offering digital supply chain solutions to a variety of global brands, Ven.ue is being used as the complete end-to-end managed service solution for Funimation Entertainment, providing a full OTT Video-on-Demand service encompassing avails-based ordering, ingest, processing, delivery, native app development, subscription management, digital and physical commerce transactions, analytics, and reporting.

Sony solutions, including Media Backbone NavigatorX and Hive and the Ci cloud platform, are also in use at broadcasters, sports networks, financial services companies and universities.

Sony has built APIs to more than 100 on-premise and cloud based devices and actively distributes to more than 1400 platforms globally; connecting those APIs back into its cloud distribution service. Its application solutions are developed to optimize the power of cloud processing and distribution, and Sony’s cloud collaborative tools are growing based on feedback from media customers.

The consolidation of these technologies and all of Sony’s solutions capabilities into one organization allows the company to work effectively with all types of customers, helping them anticipate, address and overcome their workflow challenges.

The new Media Solutions Division is comprised of management and national accounts teams across North America, all professionals with diverse backgrounds in technology, news production, engineering, marketing and product and software development.