EVS Acquisition of Axon Digital Design Sets Sights on U.S. Market; Enhanced IP Workflows
The decision by EVS to acquire Axon Digital Design was driven by two key factors, according to EVS CEO Serge Van Herck: a complementary product portfolio with little overlap as well as an opportunity to give Axon Digital renewed marketing lift in the U.S. where it is still relatively unknown.
Serge Van Herck, EVS, CEO, says the acquisition of Axon Digital Design brings two companies with complementary technology together.
“Axon is quite well known in EMEA and Asia and the presence EVS has in the U.S. will make us able to bring Axon products to our customers quite rapidly,” he says. “It opens up the Axon sales force to the American market so on the commercial side it is in a very strong position.”
Peter Schut, Axon Digital Design, CTO, says Score Master, a live IP flow routing system from EVS coupled with Axon’s Cerebrum control and monitoring system is a perfect example of the tight integration of technology with zero overlap.
“It’s a nice combination,” he says.
Research and development at both companies will continue to be a big part of their efforts and Van Herck says that the two teams will work closely together on other new products and combinations of previous technologies.
“Together we can offer products that have full workflows, are more integrated, and reduce complexity,” he adds.
Peter Schut, Axon Digital Design, CTO, says EVS and Axon can work closely on new remote production workflows.
The acquisition is the largest in EVS’ history and positions EVS to be able to provide a comprehensive modern media infrastructure solution that includes advanced IP processing, SDI/IP conversion, SDN-based control and monitoring, as well as UHD-4K and IP multiviewer.Other key products from Axon include the Neuron IP stream processing platform and the Synapse modular infrastructure platform that provides a scalable and redundant end-to-end solution.
With more and more EVS clients looking at remote workflows the ability to take advantage of the Neuron’s ability to transmit signals over long distances is an important capability, according the Van Herck.
“Latency is a big issue and new codecs enable short turn-around times of less than 20 milliseconds,” he adds.
The current Coronavirus crisis has more and more sports production professionals figuring out new workflows that can require less people on site and have more working from fixed facilities tied to the operations at the venue.
“If it is done cleverly there is equipment that is fixed in the truck that travels but there will also be growth in remote centralized facilities and the current environment will accelerate that move,” says Schut.
Adds Van Herck: “We are helping a lot of our customers look at remote workflows and the ability to have OB trucks on site but the EVS operators working at the broadcast facility or even at home. We’re working hard to help our customers do that and, in the future, it will be even more important.”
For more information on EVS Broadcast Equipment, please contact Stephane Jauroyou at [email protected].