IBC 2016: tpc switzerland ag turns to Sony, arvato Systems to commission Media Explorer
tpc switzerland ag, the technical service provider of Swiss broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), has commissioned Media Explorer in order to modernise its workflow and production processes. Media Explorer, which is based on a combination of the Sony Media Backbone Conductor and the VPMS media asset management system from arvato Systems, will allow advanced workflow, metadata, and asset management to be implemented.
The intelligent software will significantly increase the economic efficiency of production processes. Qvest Media developed the software design and the integration of Media Explorer in close cooperation with arvato Systems and Sony.
tpc launched the Media Explorer project around two years ago in order to prepare its technological infrastructure for the growing challenges of digital content workflow. The aim was to create a modern management system for metadata and assets, as well as an integrated solution for the efficient exchange of information and data between separate islands of production within the company. tpc commissioned the specialists from Qvest Media as their development partners to prepare an analysis of requirements, the software design and the subsequent system integration. They based the design of the Media Explorer on Sony’s Media Backbone Conductor (MBC), a SOA-based platform aimed at integration and workflow orchestration, and the VPMS asset management system from arvato Systems. The resulting middleware fits into the system as an integration tool between the individual production tasks, ensuring flexible and efficient workflow management.
“Administering, simplifying, optimizing and automating workflows and ensuring their transparency continue to be a central task of data management. We know all about the investment required in terms of time, money and training that integrating new hardware and software systems involves for our customers. This is why we have created a solution in the form of the Media Explorer that reduces these transactions and at the same time hugely increases the flexibility of continuous technological renewal and maintenance of infrastructure,” says Christian Lenz, Head of Business Consulting at Qvest Media.
The Media Explorer can therefore avoid compatibility problems, and redundant processes and tasks become a thing of the past. The heart of the Media Explorer system design is a service-oriented architecture in the form of an enterprise service bus. This interconnects the VPMS and the MBC so closely that even technologies that are by nature incompatible with each other can be connected without having to communicate directly with each other. This enables the flexible integration of new technologies into existing workflows without having to change the entire system to accommodate new technologies.