SVG Sit-Down: Lawo’s Andreas Hilmer Discusses Lawo HOME, Future of IP and Cloud Services

New platform addresses customer concerns about security, infrastructure

At IBC 2022 last month, Lawo introduced the HOME-native .edge (read: dot edge) hyper-density SDI/IP conversion and routing platform, designed as an easy drop-in SDI-router replacement. Each rear I/O blade provides 48 HD-BNC connectors for SD/HD/3G/UHD SDI interfacing, resulting in 192 SDI/IP conversions per two rack units. It also provides full support for the SMPTE ST 2110 suite of standards as well as ST 2022-7 redundancy, providing not only advanced essence-based handling but also ensuring seamless protection switching of audio, video, and ancillary data streams in both local and wide-area network operations. SVG sat down with Andreas Hilmer, CMO, Lawo, during the show to discuss HOME and trends that customers were talking about.

Lawo’s Andreas Hilmer: “Everything that we release is cloud-ready or cloud-capable, but we aren’t building our own cloud infrastructure.”

What are some of the things you have heard from customers at the show?
Security is getting to be a topic, along with the infrastructure topic, and customers are realizing that security is a necessity. We’ve addressed that within our HOME-native .edge SDI/IP conversion and routing platform, which debuted in Europe. The cloud is another topic that is like IP was pre-pandemic: you talk about it, start thinking about it, but you’re not necessarily doing it yet.

And, like IP, it seems that everyone thinks cloud is a fit but sometimes it isn’t.
It’s about distributed infrastructure or cloud-like use of processing and a flexible allocation of resources. Now it’s about understanding if the customer wants on-premises private pooling of resources, which I think is what most of them currently have in mind. It’s not necessarily going to AWS. For some, AWS works, but, for others, it’s about making more use of their investment.

What does all the cloud talk mean to Lawo and your product roadmap?
Obviously, it’s part of our vision and explicitly mentioned as everything that we release is cloud-ready or cloud-capable with all the software pieces based on micro-services and so forth. But we aren’t building our own cloud infrastructure; there are others who do that, and we don’t want to compete with them.

The interesting part will be, how to build a sustainable infrastructure that is open; customers don’t want to get locked into one vendor. And HOME is a start of that framework, with completely open technologies and a database behind it that is accessible. It’s open, transparent technology that, at the end of the day, benefits the customer.

How about the move to IP? What are you hearing on that front?
Pre-pandemic, there was a lot of discussion, but now there isn’t any. It was the only solution to enable broadcasters to have distributed productions with operators in different rooms. None of that would have been possible without the underlying IP technology.