SVG Sit-Down: EVS CCO Nicolas Bourdon on Telemetrics, XD Motion Deals, and What They Mean to EVS Customers

The company is extending its offerings into acquisition and camera support

It has been a busy couple of weeks for EVS Chief Commercial Officer Nicolas Bourdon and the EVS team. The company not only had a presence at the recent IBC but also announced two acquisitions in successive weeks: Telemetrics and XD Motion. Both are game-changers for EVS, which is broadening its product offering into acquisition and camera support. During IBC, SVG sat down with Bourdon to discuss the recent moves, what they mean to EVS, and future technology trends.

You announced two acquisitions in the past two weeks. What’s the big picture of what you guys are trying to accomplish with the Telemetrics and XD Motion deals?
It’s definitely related to the growth plan that we defined and envisioned in 2020 with the blueprint extension of an ecosystem focusing on live. There are different aspects and different layers in the ecosystem: creative tools, content management, resource allocation, management processing, and the backend. In 2020, we made a series of acquisitions for resource-management processing, the backend, and content management.

The Telemetrics and XD Motion acquisitions are in line with our vision of supporting producers and directors as they create live moments with robotics or a cabled camera or drones. We think each is a perfect match: Telemetrics is a well-established U.S. brand and has lots of potential in the rest of the world, and there is the creativity that XD Motion allows.

EVS’s Nicolas Bourdon says the addition of Telemetrics and XD Motion allows EVS to get deeper into the creative side of production.

How do you see Telemetrics helping EVS expand further into the U.S. and vice versa?
If we want to grow, we need to accelerate our position in the U.S., and we have a plan to accelerate our footprint in North America. First, we have launched what we call the EVS Rocky Mountain Hub — which is a central place for training, support, operations, and handling pre-sale requests — and increased our sales force by 15 people. But we also want to have dedicated manufacturing and R&D in North America. The Telemetrics deal reinforces our position in North America and has helped our team there grow from 30 two years ago to around 100.

We’re here at IBC, but, with those acquisitions, clearly, EVS’s next NAB Show booth is going to have camera-support gear and systems and look a bit like Sony or Grass Valley.
Absolutely. We will want to show the different aspects of the live-production value proposition we will have. We’ll be able to demonstrate both the robotic and the cable camera systems. The idea is to keep growing both organically and non-organically.

We’re asking everyone about AI and generative AI and the role those technologies play within a company. EVS has had the Xtra Motion replay technology, which is more generative AI, and Telemetrics has AI in its robotic pedestals. Clearly, there is a place for both within EVS.
We’ve been investing in generative AI for almost 10 years, and now we have a relationship with the University of Liege in Belgium focused on data tracking for the next three to five years. The goal is to focus on creating value with things like Xtra Motion, de-focusing, and then tracking of objects within 16×9 and 9×16 frames. We want to make sure the creative team can create more content and add value for distribution over more channels on any kind of platform.