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DataBee is growing fast â join us!
Letâs get right to the point: weâre growing fast and looking for great minds to come with us. Â
In April, CTS launched DataBee⢠â Comcastâs innovative cloud-native security, risk and compliance data fabric platform. The original concept of DataBee was designed by Comcastâs CISO organization to gain more security insights using data generated throughout the business and validate the efficacy of our security programs. And weâre excited to share the benefits DataBee with other organizations. As Nicole Bucala, our VP and GM of Cybersecurity said in this blog, DataBee âis solving a problem Iâd seen vendors try to address, unsuccessfully, for years: the desire to centralize security, compliance, and business data neatly, sorted and combined elegantly in a single place, from which insights could be derived and actions to be taken.âÂ
Since launch, not only has DataBee gotten a lot of buzz (pun intended), but we continue to identify more use cases that can benefit from it. As a result, Comcast is investing heavily into the future of DataBee, and weâre inviting you to explore a place on our expanding team. Â
Comcast: a career â and company â you can be proud ofÂ
Comcast Technology Solutions is a fantastic place for bright minds and forward-thinkers looking to innovate and evolve with a company they can be proud of. As part of Comcast NBCUniversal, youâll be joining one of the strongest, most forward-thinking companies in the world, with a multitude of ways to collaborate and evolve your own career path. Weâre not just resting on our laurels as a Fortune 40 company â Comcast NBCUniversal has a proud heritage of employee satisfaction, environmental action, and community support:Â Â
93% of our employees rate us as a Great Place to Work.
2023 is our tenth consecutive year on the Points of Light Civic 50 list of community-minded companies.
DiversityInc. has recognized us as a Top 20 company for inclusion.
LinkedIn ranks us as #13 in their list of top companies to work for.
Open positions: just a startÂ
Creative thinkers and great âpeople peopleâ are expanding DataBeeâs reach across complex industries that need a better way to not only protect themselves, but to do more with their data. Our engineering and sales teams are thriving with professionals who are building the future of data. Â
Click here to check out our current open positions.Â
Strategic Account Executive (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Field GRC Architect (Colorado, Virtual)
Cybersecurity Software Developer (Virtual)
Principal DevOps Engineer (Virtual)
Principal DevOps Engineer (Virtual)
UI Full Stack Developer (Virtual)
UI Full Stack Developer (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Platform Engineer (Virtual)
Sr. Manager Development Operations (Virtual)
Data Solutions Engineer (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Principal SaaS Architect (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Data Scientist Manager (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Data Analysis Manager (Virtual)
Cybersecurity Dataflow Software Engineering Manager (Virtual)
Senior Director Product Manager, Data Fabric Platform (Virtual)
Director Product Manager, Data Fabric (Virtual)
Please donât hesitate to reach out to me personally on LinkedIn â we can talk about DataBeeâs plans, your career goals, and where we might find a place to work together. Thereâs a lot more to come; DataBee is just starting to take flight. Â
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Introducing DataBee: Sweetening the Security, Risk and Compliance Challenges of the Large Enterprise
Today, the Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) cybersecurity business unit announced DataBeeâ˘, a cloud native security, risk and compliance data fabric platform. DataBee marks the first âhome grownâ product from this business unit and â like the other great products and platforms offered across the CTS suite â brings to market a solution originally developed for Comcastâs own use.
A security data fabric built by security professionals for security professionals
At its essence, DataBee weaves together disparate security data from across your technology stack into a single fabric where it is standardized, sharable, and searchable for analyses, monitoring, and reporting at scale. While the concept of a data fabric has been around for some time, you may not have yet come across a âsecurity data fabric.â Thatâs because itâs time to bring security into the data fabric equation.
DataBee was inspired by Comcastâs internal security and compliance teams. The proliferation of cybersecurity tools and voluminous amounts of data made it difficult to combine for a unified view, creating silos while being costly to store and analyze. In much the same way a data fabric is used for streamlining access to and sharing data in distributed data environments, DataBee security data fabric combines data sources, data sets, and controls from various security tools to bring security data to the organizationâs global data strategy.
After data is taken in from all the various feeds, DataBee aggregates, compresses, standardizes, enriches, correlates and normalizes it before transferring a full historical, time-series dataset to a data lake where data is stored. Enter SnowflakeâŚ
DataBee delivers a security data fabric for customers on the Snowflake Data Cloud
With Comcast Technology Solutionsâ launch of DataBee, weâre proud to announce a strategic partnership with Snowflake, the Data Cloud company. DataBee is integrated with Snowflake, enabling customers to quickly and easily connect DataBee to their Snowflake instance where data is stored and processed.
The unique architecture of the Snowflake platform separates âcomputeâ from âstorageâ, enabling organizations to scale up or down as needed, and store and analyze large volumes of data in a cost-effective way. This not only reduces costs but also provides flexibility, speed, and scalability, making it an ideal choice for storing security data.
After DataBee parses, flattens, and normalizes data for analysis, Snowflakeâs platform is able to store substantial volumes of data for an extended period of timeâhistorically a big challenge for cybersecurity solution providersâwhile driving down costs and maintaining high performance. The robust analytics enables teams across the organization to leverage the same dataset for high fidelity analysis, decisioning, response, and assurance outcomes without worrying about retention limits.
Normalized and enriched data from Snowflake can be exported into a customerâs business intelligence (BI) tool such as Tableau or PowerBI, generating more actionable reporting and metrics. Threat hunters also experience enhanced capabilities by using the same, clean data with tools of their choice, such as Jupyter Notebooks, enabling them to identify real threats faster as they conduct their investigation across large-scale datasets. Further, the enriched data from DataBee can be joined with additional datasets from the Snowflake Marketplace to derive additional insights.
DataBee provides security, risk and compliance capabilities for customers looking to create a security data lake strategy with their cloud data platform.
Cloud-native security and compliance data fabric at scale
Enabling a unified global data strategy with DataBee
DataBee combines the business context needed by security, risk and compliance teams to protect an organizationâs people and assets. These teams include threat hunters, data scientists, security operations center (SOC) analysts, compliance and audit specialists, and incident responders. This unified view of critical security data with business context enables people in these roles to rapidly identify real threats and manage compliance.
Some use cases include:
Compliance: For continuous controls assurance for security controls such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) coverage, asset management, vulnerability management, and more. DataBee provides near real-time visibility into an organizationâs compliance and risk posture.
Threat Hunting: Designed for faster time-to-detection by enabling threat hunters to conduct automated and deeper searches with the ability to run multiple hunts at once.
Data Modeling: For supporting and building machine learning models. DataBee provides threat detection teams with time-series analytics to create machine-learning based detection.
SIEM Decoupling: Separate the storage of data that typically goes into a SIEM solution from your analytical layer. Cleansing data at the upstream results in SIEM cost reduction and highly performative analysis.
Behavior Baselining with Anomaly Detection: With your data in a clean, sharable, and usable format, security teams can easily understand user and device behavior and to rapidly detect and take action on any anomalies.Â
The real-world benefits of a security data fabric
The security data fabric architecture built and implemented by Comcastâs security team has yielded impressive results for the broader security, risk and compliance teams across the organization. In our own use we saw:
Daily data throughput reductions in our SIEM resulting in a 30% decrease in the cost of our security operations
3x faster threat detection
35% noise reduction in the data sets users work with
Faster compliance answers as a result of streamlined compliance reporting and automated queries
These results validate the very positive impact that bridging the worlds of data and security can have on an organization, and that we want other enterprises to benefit from through DataBee. When organizations have clean, sharable data to leverage that adds business context to security events, security teams can identify and detect real threats quickly and compliance teams can validate and achieve continuous compliance assurance while reducing costs for data storage and SIEM throughput. By bringing data fabric to the enterprise security tool chest, DataBee improves their security, risk and compliance posture.
Indeed, security is now all about the data. Businesses have made significant investments in their security teams and the solutions they use to protect the business. However, if all of these tools are working in silos and independent of the larger business context, they will still be inadequate at detecting and protecting an organization from cyberthreats.
By bringing security under their global data strategy, organizations will have more actionable insights, reduced false positive findings, the ability to conduct threat hunting across large-scale data sets, and achieve near real-time visibility into their compliance and risk posture.
Meet DataBee at RSA
The DataBee team will be hosting exclusive events and meetings during the RSA Conference in San Francisco. Check out our itinerary:
A Recipe for Security Data Lake Success, a breakfast event on April 26, 2023 at 8:30am
Request a meeting with the DataBee executive team
Learn more about DataBee and download our data sheet
The Future of Cybersecurity Brought Me to Comcast, a blog by Nicole Bucala, VP & GM, Cybersecurity Suite
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The Future of Cybersecurity Brought Me to Comcast
Comcast Technology Solutions is proud to announce that Nicole Bucala has been brought on board to lead our new Cybersecurity business unit as its Vice President and General Manager. We asked Nicole to share the reasons why, as a cybersecurity leader, she made the choice to join us â and to set the stage as we bring Comcastâs scale and innovation to bear for the security needs of industries around the world.
By: Nicole Bucala | VP & GM, CTS Cybersecurity
When I was approached to join Comcast last summer to lead its new SaaS enterprise cybersecurity business unit, I was both skeptical and intrigued. Skeptical for the obvious reasons: there arenât many stellar success stories about a diversified global conglomerate getting into enterprise cybersecurity, which is a complex and challenging market. Yet at the same time, Comcast was approaching its foray into enterprise cybersecurity in a way I hadnât seen anyone try before. Comcast was, in fact, choosing to bring its own chief information security officerâs (CISO) inventions to market. This meant that Comcast was commercializing proven, accepted product concepts in use by experts, internally, and at scale.
Why did this scream out to me as powerful? Well, for those of us whoâve sold security to Comcast before, we know their security organization is staunch. The stakes are high when trying to secure critical infrastructure at scale. Staffed with over a thousand security professionals, Comcast builds many of its own security technologies to cater to its size and scale, as well as to address the advanced threats and increasing regulatory scrutiny it must withstand. In addition, Comcast is a Fortune 30, highly profitable company that has a substantial, wisely allocated security investment profile. So, anything built internally has to improve security efficacy, work at Comcast scale AND be cost-effective enough to save the organization money overall â a key value proposition that can immediately differentiate a commercial security offering.
At the time, I was employed at Zscaler, in charge of building innovative partnerships with the largest global conglomerates, which entailed designing and launching Zscalerâs zero trust innovations to the forefront of the next major adjacencies: 5G, operational technology (OT), IoT, and application security. I was working at the fastest growing public company in cyber, leading a phenomenal team, working for incredibly inspiring executives, and I had zero intention of leaving. Yet, to the surprise (and perhaps caution) of many around me, I made the leap, and I donât regret it.
Here are five reasons why Comcast is poised to win in its new adventure, and I consider myself fortunate to be a leader of this amazing team:
Â
The solutions we are commercializing are imagined, designed, built and used by Comcast itself. I have been surprised to learn that this translates to a solution that both saves an organization money, and can be sold in a differentiated manner. Comcast is a financially driven company with a high bar for the effectiveness of its technologies; so for any internally built solution to survive, it has to be efficient and cost effective at scale. In addition, from a commercialization perspective Iâve found that practitioner-to-practitioner conversations are naturally laden with inherent trust. When we are talking with the CISO of another Fortune 100 company about our solution, we are able to get to a much more ârealâ level of talk, faster, when compared generally to customer calls I attended as an employee of a pure-play cybersecurity vendor. Thereâs a simple reason for this inherent trust: When youâre a practitioner looking to help other practitioners, you have a grounded level of understanding in the pros and cons of the solution youâre discussing. You know the essence of the pain points it addresses. You know, with precision, the outcomes you saw. And yes, you have experienced issues with the solution, because nothing is perfect â and you have resolutions to them that worked. What this means, is that other practitioners can trust that your knowledge of the solution is accurate and pertinent.
Â
Comcastâs solution is a novel architectural approach that solves a long-standing pain point for security and compliance teams. The proposed solution is solving a problem Iâd seen vendors try to address, unsuccessfully, for years: the desire to centralize security, compliance, and business data neatly, sorted and combined elegantly in a single place, from which insights could be derived and actions to be taken. Back in 2019, RSA Securityâs annual industry conference had a theme of Business-Driven Security. That was also the first year that Extended Detection and Response (XDR) became a âreal thing.â Vendors had dreams of combining enterprise and security data and controls to create a single source of truth and single pane of glass for investigations and compliance assurance, replete with business-oriented risk analytics for C-suites and boards. Itâs now 2022, and XDR still hasnât caught on the way practitioners hoped. I had seen other companies try to create similar solutions to the problem but they were unable to identify an architecture that didnât skyrocket the storage costs, or were unable to make the product reliably scale for Fortune 50 accounts, or the system was âclosedâ such that only certain security personas could use it in prescribed ways. And so, I was delighted to see that Comcast had figured out an elegant new scalable, open architecture that saved money, while also being built on all the latest cloud-based tech.
This cloud-native platform was a new class of tech: a security, risk and compliance data fabric platform. It sat between a customerâs data sources, data lake, and analytical tools, achieving a true decoupling of security & compliance data ingest, from data storage, from the analytical layer. It ingests and transforms data such that a compressed, normalized, enriched, and time-series dataset is stored in a single data lake, in a way that reduces your SIEM costs by at least 30% and yields detections 3x faster. With approximately 100 data feeds from the top security and compliance tools today, protecting an enterprise with ~150K workforce, millions of endpoints and saving $15M+ in costs, the Comcast solution was proven to have profound impact in several ways. For a company with a huge amount of data to contend with, this single invention has changed how Comcast does security, for the better.
Comcast offers a proven model for commercializing in-house inventions. The new cybersecurity business unit is housed in Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), the division within Comcast that takes  internally developed technology and makes it available to other enterprises. CTS has successfully commercialized several other internal inventions, including those in content and streaming, advertising, communications infrastructure, and other technology. CTS offers its business units much flexibility and autonomy, which means that as the leader of the cybersecurity BU, Iâd have the ability to set up new sales channels, billing and payment methods, and bring on new types of roles and talent.
Â
Comcast offers excellent security career development. Believe it or not, I considered the chance to work with a large team of security practitioners to be a rare learning opportunity for someone whose career was largely on the commercial security vendor side. For years, Iâd worked at security vendors whoâd revered CISOs, trying to understand their motives, desires, anxieties and doubts⌠but never had I worked directly with one or oneâs team closely over an extended period of time. I also had hired a few leaders in the past whoâd worked as SOC analysts early in their careers, and saw they had a really grounded orientation around security products that everyone else on the security vendor side seemed to lack. By being embedded with practitioners, you simply get a better innate sense of the real problems, and can discern which security innovations will provide lasting value. It eliminates the element of guesswork that, no matter how many customer conversations you have, is otherwise unavoidably part of the product development process at traditional security vendors, unless you are also a stereotypical customer yourself.
Â
Passion, and the benefit of being naive. The employees at Comcast who are working on commercializing this offering are without a doubt, by and large, some of the most passionate people I have worked with in my career. There is often a stereotype that employees of big companies work 9-5, but I have found the opposite to be true at Comcast: everyone is routinely working at all hours of the day to make this program a success. I canât remember who said it, but thereâs a famous saying out there that passionate people almost always succeed at their mission. They almost always achieve more than someone who lacks passion. Furthermore, the fact that Comcast is newish to selling SaaS security solutions to large enterprises is, in many ways, a blessing. The battle scars of âexperienceâ can sometimes be a negative: they can cloud judgment, cause risk intolerance, and damper innovation. Grit, determination, and a willingness to learn can almost always make up for a lack of experience.
Over the next year, we have set some really exciting and daunting goals. We are launching a Generally Available first version of DataBeeâ˘, along with iterative releases every few months. We are going to build our brand in enterprise security. We are going to sign some fantastic strategic design partners. We will build relationships with strategic technology and go-to-market partners. Iâll be building out my team of product development, marketing, sales, business development and operations professionals, and I would be very excited to bring along some of the top talent in cyber. Feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about how to become part of the amazing team here at Comcast!
Upcoming virtual event:Â Top 5 Predictions For the Future of Security Data Lakes Webinar
In the past year, security teams have had to endure many new cybersecurity challengesâfrom managing hybrid work environments to sustaining major ransomware attacks, catastrophic vulnerabilities, and supply chain risks. As an industry, we must take a step back and look at these challenges from a different angle. We should rethink the technologies and data architectures that are in place today to understand why they are no longer serving their purpose.Â
Register here.
Â
Interested in joining the CTS Cybersecurity team? We are hiring for the following roles.
United States Based Positions
India Based Positions
Sr Manager, Marketing (Brand & Thought Leadership) Â
QA Manager Â
BluVector (Federal Government) ATD/ATH Customer Support & Professional Services Lead Â
Software Development Manager:
Manager, Software Development
Manager, Software Development
Development Engineer 4:
Development Engineer 4
Development Engineer 4
Development Engineer 4
Development Engineer 4
Development Engineer 3:
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
Development Engineer 3
SDET Engineer 3:
Quality & Automation Engineer 3
Quality & Automation Engineer 3
Quality & Automation Engineer 3
Quality & Automation Engineer 3
Â
Learn more about the DataBee Hive.
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A new ground game for broadcasters?
The 2020âs have been a decade of big changes, but for broadcasters and MVPDs itâs already been a time of particular transformation. Last year saw the reallocation of C-band spectrum for 5G services and the subsequent migration of providers, either to a new satellite, or to a reimagined approach to delivery â namely moving away from satellite delivery entirely and into a terrestrial-based delivery model that can pave the way for full IP-based delivery. Now that the 5G spectrum transition is, for the most part, in the rear-view mirror, is this âground gameâ approach still a viable path forward for MVPDâs?
Terrestrial delivery is something that weâve been talking about actively since well before the C-band transition (you can read more about it here). âThe ground-based option is something we developed in response to the FCC mandate that affected so many of our customers,â explains James Toburen, Affiliate Sales executive for Comcast Technology Solutions. âAt first, impacted MVPDs were really in a situation where they absolutely had to make a decision on what to do; but now itâs a decision thatâs grounded more firmly in the benefits to the business, which are numerous.â Â
From âdoing dishesâ to a path towards full IP delivery
We get into the weeds on the technical aspects of terrestrial distribution in this blog, but as a quick recap:
Terrestrial delivery replaces the satellite feeds with broadband IP networking, typically fiber, at the cable plant.
These feeds are still aggregated and assembled into experiences that are delivered to customers.
Although technology to pre-compress and bundle satellite signals has lowered infrastructure costs from the âdish farmsâ of the past, fixed bandwidth issues still exist that make it challenging for providers to offer new services; plus, satellite is a uni-directional delivery method that doesnât allow for the interactive experiences that customers expect and enjoy today.
With a move to internet delivery, MVPDs gains more scalability and flexibility, and the ability to offer more dynamic services.
âWith Managed Terrestrial Distribution, itâs not a completely new delivery model; programming can still delivered to customers via QAM,â Toburen continues. âBut our terrestrial distribution paves the way for transitioning away from managing that satellite dish-based headend. With IP-delivered video, youâre gaining not just a lot of flexibility and redundancy, but youâre delivering even more content that folks want.â
Five reasons to transition to terrestrial: a deeper dive
MVPDs and operators are adopting Managed Terrestrial Distribution as a foundational step in their digital transformation; itâs a transition that not only lowers risk but also leads to new dynamic content experiences for an evolving, more competitive marketplace.Â
For more information beyond the blog links above, read our guide: Five Reasons to Transition to Terrestrial Distribution. It outlines the immediate practical benefits to reimagining your delivery model â gaining quality, efficiency, and reliability â while also providing insights into the long-term benefits to services, business plans, and ultimately your bottom line.
Download the guide here.Â
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Global Advertising: the connected, collaborative ecosystem
In this business, thoughts about âagility,â âtime-to-market,â and âpersonalizationâ are used every day, but the rapid pace of upheaval in 2020 and 2021, whether it be from pandemic or social unrest, gave advertisers real-world opportunities to test their mettle; to see if their processes and technologies could:
shift at the speed of their audiences,
deliver ads on-time to every screen, and
collaborate with providers and emerging media platforms in order to inform data-driven content decisions more effectively.
If all the worldâs a stage, itâs incumbent on advertisers and agencies to be positioned for success before the curtain lifts.
âThe international advertising ecosystem has really evolved dramatically in a very short time,â says Simon Morris, Head of Enterprise Sales for CTSâ Advertising Suite. âOn one hand, from a content standpoint youâve got to be prepared with media and messaging for different consumers, and be able to execute or pivot at a momentâs notice. On the other hand, the complexity of executing accurately, from country to country, is an enormous undertaking. This is precisely why weâve developed such solid foundational partnerships with companies like Peach, Innovid, and The Team Companies.â
Peach: Connected data and local support to âde-fragâ the ad ecosystem
If youâve ever de-fragmented your computerâs hard drive, then youâve cleaned up your data so the entire system can run more smoothly. Peach is a lynchpin in a comprehensive global ad operation, currently enjoying its 25th year serving advertisers agencies, broadcasters, and publishers by bridging the data divide across a global customer base. Together, we offer a full-service solution to deliver spots to viewers in more than 100 countries. This partnership results in a comprehensive video ad management solution with a global network of local experts to provide reliable, trusted, centralized control of increasingly complex ad operations.
The combination of Peachâs local expertise and global capabilities deliver benefits that extend all the way into reporting that capitalizes on the connected data to bring back insights across the global ecosystem. Their agnostic API integrations across ad ecosystems, and collaboration with companies like Innovid, another one of our partners and one of the worldâs largest independent ad platforms, elevate the benefits even further:
Innovid: Â Innovations for every ad experience
Earlier this year, Peach announced their platform integration with Innovid. This successful integration leverages the Innovid Creative Bridge to make moving content between platforms and customer folders seamless and straightforward. Itâs more than just a process improvement: Peach stewards creative assets through rigorous accuracy and quality controls, managing distribution to eliminate the need for duplicative file uploads and downloads. From there, Innovidâs ad serving and hosting, as well as their creative toolsets, allow clients to customize content, get it to the right screen, track it, and then optimize performance â a continuous improvement loop.
The TEAM Companies (TTC) â a strategic alliance for metadata mastery
The complexity of modern advertising doesnât just apply to the fragmented device / viewer ecosystem. Advertising is a creative endeavor, which means contracts, agreements, and talent / usage rights that vary wildly from asset to asset. Violations in rights or permissions arenât just costly in financial terms but can also damage valuable relationships that need to be protected. Global advertising efforts take an already-complex problem and give it more to contend with. CTSâ Ad Management Platform is deeply integrated with the TTC platform to solve for all of it, providing end-to-end control of commercial rights management. Advertising companies can now track an assetâs use across media channels to ensure adherence to rights and policies no matter when or where an ad gets played.
Last year, TTC joined forces with Cast & Crew, a powerhouse that has served the entertainment industry for decades with financial services like residuals, payroll, and taxes. The union bolsters TTCâs strength, and its ability to expand services and global expertise.
Ultimately, itâs all about campaign performance
To be an advertiser in todayâs global ecosystem is sort of like being an action hero on top of a bullet train racing at top speed. The real-time demands and the need for accurate execution are all built on top of technology thatâs moving at a breakneck pace. Fortunately, there are experts in the disciplines, tools, and techniques needed to inform and act accurately on todayâs decisions, and illuminate the path forward. As advertisers, agencies and providers learn to build a more efficient, simplified, and intelligent operation, they increase the amount of time and resources they can focus on understanding and optimizing performance across every active campaign.
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What's Next For Media and Entertainment Technology in the New Roaring '20s?
It takes more than just a killer catalog or cutting-edge creative to stand out in todayâs media markets. The winners are harnessing the power of emerging technologies to simplify operations, drive more value from data, and bring analytics to the forefront of decision-making. Thereâs a lot to take in, and to pay attention to.
Realizing goals for 2022 in an agile and cost-effective way will depend in large part on advertisers, MVPDs, operators, and content and streaming providersâ willingness to look beyond the current ways of creating and delivering media to new possibilities provided by emerging media and entertainment technology.
As advertisers and media and entertainment providers of all types seek to create highly personalized viewing experiences for customers, they will move toward embracing technologies that allow them to increase engagement, deepen relationships between audience and brand, and find new ways to monetize.
Smarter workflows with ai / mlÂ
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have a lot of science fiction and misapplication applied to them; but these powerful technologies underpin the next evolution of video workflow automation.
As content and video providers search for new avenues to broaden their reach, AI represents an exciting opportunity for businesses to do more with data. In fact, analysts like ABI Research expect revenue from AI and machine learning from video ad tech to surpass $9.5 billion.
Operators and providers need a better way to understand how to get the highest performance out of their content investments. Emerging solutions will address these opportunities, and VideoAI⢠is a new framework of learning technologies designed to do just that. VideoAI scrutinizes video content â video, audio, closed captions -- to create actionable metadata that streamlines operations and improves content ROI. This rich metadata can be applied in creative ways to improve workflows, give advertisers contextual information to target ads more effectively, and to create new experiences for live and on-demand viewers.
As AI technology proves itself in real-world video applications, more companies will move to adopt it to drive revenue growth and create tailored experiences for consumers, particularly as the end of third-party cookies approaches in 2023. One report suggests that AI-powered audience solutions will grow by as much as 20%. Are you ready for this sea change?
From soup to nuts, automation is on the menuÂ
Automation is a buzzword across all tech sectors, and for good reason. Not only are AI and ML solutions the next step in the evolution of automation, savvy businesses will recognize that taking a comprehensive and holistic approach to automation will make all the difference in their ability to execute transformation. The right automation strategy saves time and money, allowing businesses to allocate resources from mundane, routine tasks to focus, instead, on strategic undertakings.
Automation in advertising will become especially important third-party cookies become more challenging for campaigns to rely upon. In todayâs media landscape, many advertisers operate with a patchwork of solutions across multiple media sources, data providers, and technology partners. Under these conditions, itâs a serious challenge to gain a clear view into the ad creation and delivery process â and advertisers are unable to use new audience targeting solutions to tailor their messages. In a business in which automation has a foothold, plenty of people are still poring over manual spreadsheets.
Thatâs why a more holistic and unified approach to automation will enable faster and more seamless management of creative, media buying, and distribution. Instead of relying on manual processes and vendor-specific platforms, businesses can deploy a centralized, automated tool to support ad targeting and versioning.
A well-conceived and comprehensive automation strategy will ultimately allow advertisers to really and truly connect the dots across the world of channels and formats and across internal workflows and external partners. Instead of limping along, with piecemeal automation, an across-the-board strategy will bring together distribution, creative customization, and reporting to help reinstate control over a fragmented process, increase ROI, and deliver measurable results.
Redefining the ecosystem with aggregation and terrestrial distribution  Â
In response to an abundance of content destinations, consumers are faced with a new challenge: How do I manage all my choices? Moving from device to device, app to app, service to service â itâs a 21st-century problem in search of a more streamlined solution.
To address this, successful pay TV operators will find a way to transform into âsuper aggregators.â Not only will this dramatically reengineer the viewing experience to prioritize consumer preferences, it will require operators to find soltuions that work across multiple services and platforms and provide customers with the content they want, when and how they want it.
For operators that have traditionally relied on satellite to get content onto screens, fiber-based delivery represents an exciting opportunity to stay ahead of the curve. Not only does terrestrial distribution allow providers to reduce their footprint and lower overhead, it provides a convenient path to IP while maintaining clear, high-quality service and expanding channel offerings.
Ultimately, in the evolving landscape, the winners will be willing to explore new ways of doing business and embrace opportunities such as emerging media and entertainment technologies to expand their vision and enhance the viewing experience for their customers in exciting and innovative ways.
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Implementing Zero Trust Principles at Scale
The recently released OMB memo M-22-09 is a step toward bringing federal agencies in line with what many organizations in the private sector have been working toward for a while now â constructing a Zero Trust Architecture.
We discussed the strategic implications of this federal directive in a previous article and would like to also offer a tactical perspective on meeting these requirements from a decade of experience developing machine learning cybersecurity technology with the U.S. Government.
Beyond adopting a new buzz word, embracing Zero Trust means remastering the tested principle of trust nothing, verify everything in order to secure a network with untold endpoints geographically dispersed over a landscape fraught with increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.
Encrypt data in motion
This includes internal and external data flows, as well as applications â even email. A vital first step is to encrypt all DNS traffic using DoH/DoT today and encrypting all HTTP traffic using TLS 1.3. While doing so you donât want to compromise security monitoring so make sure to implement local DNS resolvers whose logs can be used to analyze the clear-text requests.
From a castle to the cloud
As the requirement to support remote users increases, embracing the security features resident in cloud computing certainly a critical first step to safely enable access from the Internet for both employees and partners. Following this macro-level migration trend of large IT organizations clearly recognizes that many cloud providers have already adapted to some measure of Zero Trust Architecture but there is not a one size fits all for every organization and their cybersecurity risks. Of course, no transition happens overnight and there will be some services that never do. For those use cases, weâll still need to secure and monitor the needed on-premises resources as part of the broader security posture.
Logical segmentation
The federal directive to develop and implement a logical micro-segmentation or network-based segmentation is clear in the memo. The challenge then becomes finding ways to limit and, if necessary, quickly identifying the lateral movement of any adversary who might gain a foothold within your network is imperative going forward.
AI enabled hunting
Endpoint security certainly plays a role in moving toward Zero Trust, but as EO 14028 emphasizes this also involves developing a real-time hunting capability rooted in machine learning. And to effectively hunt government-wide, and most critically address the rise of zero-day attacks, collection of telemetry from systems without EDRs installed is invaluable â since an adversary would simply hide where the defenses are weakest. Achieving Zero Trust isnât just about prevention, but comprehensive and continuous monitoring.
Hundreds of thousands of new malware variants are being developed daily. Global ransomware attacks rose by 151% last year1 and the average recovery cost per incident more than doubled to $1.8 million.2 This memo codifies what those stats make clear â in order to secure our nationâs vital infrastructure, we need intelligent solutions that go beyond monitoring systems for known threats.
BluVector provides advanced machine learning cybersecurity technology to commercial enterprise and government organizations. Our innovative AI empowers frontline professionals with the real time analytics required to secure the largest systems at scale.
Learn more about our philosophy of Zero Trust and understand how we deploy within existing security stacks. For more BluVector thought leadership on ZeroTrust, read Zero Trust: A Holistic Approach by Travis Rosiek.
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Zero Trust: A Holistic Approach
The Presidentâs Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released M-22-09 last month, announcing it will require all federal agencies to move toward a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) by FY24.
BluVector has worked closely with large government agencies since our inception, and weâre encouraged to see clear direction toward a common cybersecurity strategy.
After more than a decade of offering our machine learning technology to secure our nationâs most sensitive data and helping to protect one of the largest and most advanced ISPs in the western world, weâd like to offer our perspective on Zero Trust as a holistic philosophy toward cybersecurity.
Trust nothing, verify everything is a time-tested principle that has been crucial to designing modern IT networks. Itâs also a tall order and we invite agencies and large-scale enterprise organizations to view Zero Trust as a continuous journey, not an end state. We continue to recommend implementing a layered defense that increases visibility across the entire network and connected endpoints to analyze all data for any malicious code.
Perimeters arenât what they used to be
Even though Zero Trust doesnât mean Zero Perimeter â like it or not, as remote work becomes the new normal for more federal and civilian employees, we are moving away from the security of trusted networks. New identities and devices join our expanded networks daily, running new applications and pushing more data from unknown places. In this brave new world, itâs more important than ever for the cybersecurity teams protecting critical infrastructures to assume other users, systems and networks are already compromised. These practices have been adhered to by cybersecurity professionals from time immemorial and must not be forgotten as our industry adopts a new buzz word into our lexicon. The task of hardening these infrastructures against growing threats is paramount and all who undertake it should choose their approach early enough to ensure it aligns with their planned IT investment.
Encrypted doesnât mean protected
Encrypted data can be deleted, accessed later in memory after it has been decrypted, re-encrypted, or stolen and saved for future decryption with more advanced technology. In a ZTA, itâs imperative to encrypt all network traffic in transit, both DNS and HTTP. But operating on an open network gives the adversary many vantage points to monitor your network traffic as well. And if they can gain access through a backdoor left open on a legacy system with pre-existing accounts, whether your DNS is encrypted or not is the least of your worries. In an IoT environment, securing all the endpoints you can wonât secure your system, but might simply create a false sense of security. Remember, every single point of failure has the potential to become target number one.
Finding the adversary already in the system
Some large technology ecosystems may be currently compromised with threats that can lie dormant for months, maybe years. Putting new locks on a compromised system wonât mitigate this threat, but instead may obscure it, further enabling entrenched bad actors.
Moving toward a ZTA must be phased in, networks swept clean and continuously monitored for malicious behavior while adopting new technology and processes to better protect systems that will be open to everything â any human error or patch delay will result in immediate vulnerability.
Considering the current threat environment addressed in this memo, we recommend building a layered cybersecurity defense in order to effectively institute Zero Trust principles across any large enterprise â especially those defending our nationâs vital institutions. This will require developing a high level of cybersecurity maturity across your entire organization, investing in technology that empowers your security team to hunt effectively while protecting them from alert fatigue, and adopting policies that will allow your broader workforce to operate safely in the Wild West of the open Internet.
BluVector provides advanced machine learning cybersecurity technology to commercial enterprise and government organizations. Our innovative AI empowers frontline professionals with the real time analytics required to secure the largest systems at scale.
Learn more about our philosophy of Zero Trust and understand how BluVector can be deployed to enhance your security stack. For more BluVector guidance on implementing ZeroTrust, read Implementing Zero Trust Principles at Scale by Scott Miserendino, Ph.D.
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Converging Media Technologies, Continued
CTS Connects Summit 2021 Recap
In November we were proud to host the CTS Connects Summit for the second year. We frequently talk about the convergence of broadcast and digital workflow and this year it was even more evident that this decade will be marked by a convergence of media and advertising technologies, as real-time services, security, and monetization techniques all become more intertwined. This yearâs summit had a natural focus around creating unity between industries, fostering collaboration, flexibility, and security, with particular emphasis on experiences that improve the value equation on both sides of the screen
Weâve made the recordings of each session available to all of you here. Below are some highlights from the wide range of topics covered.
           Â
Advertising: Ad Breaks With Brains
ÂâPeople want to watch what they're interested in and will take more action if they're interested in the content that's being delivered to them,â said Kevin Lemberg, Head of Partnerships for the Advertising Suite at Comcast Technology Solutions. He and Gregg Brown, CTSâ Product Manager for Content and Streaming Provider Suite, hosted a segment about capturing metadata to stratify, customize, and personalize the viewing experience to make advertisements relevant to different segments of their audience. âYou're taking the personalization and you're taking the ability to drive addressability to the next level, and I think the future is understanding not only who your audiences are, but speaking to them directly.â There is more to come as Gregg explains - the process of âtaking that metadata, putting it into a format, like a SCTE 224 format,â will enable advertisers to disperse that information to the rest of their ecosystem.
Day one also contained a fireside chat, See Spot Run: The Life of a Commercial in a Connected Ecosystem. Greg Smith, Chief Operating Officer of the TEAM Companies based in New York, Rori Floyd, Senior Vice President of Business Affairs at the TEAM Companies, Simon Morris, Senior Director of Sales for CTS' Advertising Suite, and Ross Priestley, the VP of Advertisers & Brands at Peach, gathered to examine an adâs life cycle and the ways it is delivered to the big screen. One of the topics in this session was specifically around the added complexity of global advertising. As Priestley explains, âone of the great opportunities and challenges for global advertisers is the bewildering amount of different types of content that they can produce, right down to 11 different language versions in India for all different kinds of online platforms. And we're really helping advertisers manage that content. No longer is it just about delivering a 30 second (commercial spot), we're helping manage and solve the problem of all different kinds of video content wherever it needs to go.â
MVPDs and Operators: The Evolution of Pay TV
Day 2 put a spotlight on new products, services, and delivery methods that are powering the future for Pay TV providers. As the industry considers the trends and consumer preferences towards smart TVs and OTT content, the talk centered on how best to enable providers as the technologies and competition change.
Moderator Jon Watts led a conversation with CTS general managers Jack Heney and Allison Olien around what we referred to as âthe decade of interoperability.â âWe've seen a number of operators now coming up with a new product constructs,â explains Jack, Â âwhere they are looking to leverage the relationships they have with their customers and build up a distribution business around OTT content aggregation where they play a role in the advertising ecosystem. â
The second day also contained a fireside chat with guest speaker Pedro Bandeira, Vice President of Product and New Business at Deutsche Telekom, as well as Thijs Bijleveld from Metrological. The conversation explored, through the operatorâs perspective, the infinite world of applications that have emerged; and what future pay TV operators can expect from the industry.
Content and Streaming Providers: Focus on AI and Security
CTS is an organization that pushes adaptability at any scale, across global multi-screen experiences. Security at every level has never been more crucial. Noopur Davis, EVP, Chief Information Security and Product Privacy Officer, Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable, dove deep into her expertise and discussed the proactive and comprehensive approach her team used to ensure customers' information stays safe and secure. âOur whole focus has been, how do we make sure that security is built into our products and services, instead of bolting it on at the end? The reason is that when you build it in, it's actually kind of in the DNA of the product, it's in the DNA of the infrastructure and if you try to bolt it on, it'll still work, but it's much more expensive and much more brittle. It's not like inherently intrinsically part of what we do.
Machine learning â and how it can benefit media workflows â was the topic of another key conversation. Paul Claussen of CTS sat down with Fraser Stirling, Chief Product Officer of Sky, to share some of the new ways Sky is transforming media management. The evolution of sports entertainment made for an excellent example for Fraser to underscore a primary goal for Sky â actively recognizing the value of a consumerâs time. Using a new framework for the creation of actionable metadata, the Sky Sport recap can take a three-hour game and reduce it into a ten-minute reel of important plays; allowing viewers to watch specific highlight reels, recaps, playlists, and have notifications for all of their favorite sports on hand, anytime.
Check out all of the Summit content for free!
The CTS Connects Summit is a once-a-year event â there just arenât many opportunities for media and advertising technologists to come together and share across disciplines for the benefit of all our connected industries. All of the Summit conversations are recorded and available to you â hopefully they spark some further conversation.
Check out the summit sessions here.
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See spot run the world
The story of advertising in todayâs world is a tale of incomprehensible and increasing complexity. We can look back with nostalgia at the time when ad spots were all the same size, the same length, the same broadcast format; but in todayâs world of real-time media placements and creative optimization, brands need a complete end-to-end approach not just to reach the world, but also to understand, whatâs working and whatâs not. Â
âAdvertising has always been an art that merges creativity â pretty much in all forms â with actionable business results,â explains Kevin Lemberg, head of advertising technology partnerships for Comcast Technology Solutions. âItâs this basic definition of what an advertiser does that drives the need for a technology model with end-to-end interoperability. To face the truth that there is no single way that platforms and systems exchange information is to acknowledge that youâve got to find a way to create that unified workflow yourself.â Â
Look at the advertiserâs challenges like this: Â
Great creative work relies on the ability to understand and respond to data from a complex sea of devices. Â
Media buys and ad placements, across this planet full of screens, rely on the ability of the advertiser to communicate with every ad platform and content destination â often in real time. Â
Policies, rules, and rights follow every piece of ad creative â ensuring that international business is transacted properly, and contracts are honored. Â
Optimization of every subsequent advertising effort relies on the advertiserâs ability to see and understand todayâs performance across all end-points.   Â
Strong partners are the backbone of todayâs ad operations by solving for all these layers of complexity, allowing advertisers to stay focused on creative development and campaign performance â the reasons they got into the business to begin with. Â
DISPARATEÂ PARTNERSHIPS, ORÂ API-INTEGRATEDÂ ALLIANCES?Â
âOur partnership strategy has really evolved in response to the way the industry has changed to meet the needs of modern media,â explains Lemberg. âThings have moved so fast that advertisers had to reach out to multiple vendors and then figure out how to get them all to work together, with varying degrees of success. Weâve taken a more organic approach with an emphasis on integration and seamless data sharing.âÂ
This new model pulls together specialized areas of expertise into an organizational body that benefits every partner, and every client. Thereâs a âsteering wheelâ â our Ad Management Platform, that communicates out to the rest of the global advertising vehicle to execute on campaigns, guide personalization efforts, and bring back valuable performance data. To touch on just a few of these partnerships:Â
Peach is our premier partner for global advertising.  âAdvertising is different in every country from multiple standpoints: geographical, technical, legislative,â says Lemberg. âOur fully integrated partnership with Peach results in a workflow thatâs got localized expertise in the regions, cultures, ad ecosystems of over 100 countries â Europe, South America, EMEA regions, and more. On top of that is connected data â unified reporting and performance tools that follow your activity from country to country. Weâre both in the business of continuous innovation, which keeps the technology on top so advertisers can apply more resources to creative development and strategy.âÂ
Weâve also developed a deep partnership with Flashtalking that provides advertisers more effective ways to personalize ad content delivery, and brings fragmented data together from across the entirety of an advertiserâs omniplatform campaign efforts. Media buy systems, creative asset libraries rights management, ad traffic/delivery engines â all combined into a single platform. Â
Innovid bridges a specific gap for advertisers, bringing crucial performance data from linear television and digital campaigns into a singular, more cohesive view of campaign activity. Linear TV assets are brought into the unified system through Innovidâs Bridge API integration to ensure that ads are served in the highest quality, no matter the destination. Â
Video On Demand (VOD) is a prominent part of viewing habits for set-top-box video subscribers, but advertising served to on demand content has been a much different workflow than live programmatic advertising. We recently partnered with Freewheel (a Comcast company) on a groundbreaking set-top-box VOD Marketplace where both buy-side and sell-side parties can do business seamlessly â creating a new TV advertising ecosystem. Â
There are many more, but these recent partnerships underscore the basic thesis that advertisers needed a better, more collaborative way to solve for layers upon layers of complexity, and capitalize on the opportunities provided by a connected, multi-screen world. Â
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Digital-First Pay-TV: Four Takeaways
Pay-TV is going through a significant change as the market adapts to new consumption models and competitors. Operators have responded in a variety of ways, but so far, no consensus has emerged as to which models work, when they work, or why. Organizations who pivot to a digital-first approach â specifically, thinking from a converged broadcast and OTT perspective â not only create opportunities for themselves but can also respond more effectively to capitalize on them.
Deutsche Telekom (DT) and Orbit Showtime Network (OSN) are two companies that have been through this second stage of digital transformation. I recently had the pleasure of joining executives from both companies for a round-table discussion on this topic (you can listen to the conversation right here). As we explored their own experiences and recommendations, we identified four key digital-first responses:Â
Super-aggregation:Â For DT (8:39), aggregation allows operators to provide content-centric rather than provider-centric products, making content discovery easier via better user experiences such as one-click to subscribe and unsubscribe to services. OSN emphasized (13:18) the role of operators in terms of bundling content into packages, providing metadata aggregation, and providing a unique discovery experience.
Digital-first branding strategies: A key decision for operators is whether to use a unique brand for their online product (i.e. become a virtual operator) or leverage an existing brand. For DT (17:41), the trade-offs depend on the position of the existing brand in each market, which for them typically resulted in using a second brand but positioning it as entry level to preserve the existing brandâs high-end status. However, this depended on leveraging shared technology and shared solutions, differentiating the brands only in terms of UI and pricing. In addition (23:09), DT doesnât see consumers caring about the delivery mechanism (OTT, cable, etc.) â they care about the product and the experience. For OSN (19:55), a key consideration is whether your brand is seen by the market as being a strong content brand. At OSN, they tried a second brand (called Wavo), but realized this approach didnât work given the OSN brand carried strong content associations. Peter Riz, CTO at OSN, highlighted a second consideration too, that the lower recognition of a new brand makes it harder for consumers to find your service in mobile and TV app stores.
Operator relationships with local content providers:Â In many markets, international content providers are struggling to balance the localization of content with the need for international scale (24:44). For DT (25:40), with only finite viewing time in a day, local content will inevitably lose share against new content sources, but a new balance will be found. Meanwhile at OSN (29:54), they see the positive impact local content can have on your brand, and the opportunities it creates for unique promotion and social media campaigns.
The use of the cloud to transform businesses:Â The discussion surrounded the opportunities created by using a converged, digital-first technology platform. DT is a multi-country provider, running multiple network types, and so for them cloud-based technologies allow for a single platform for multiple countries (34:30). This creates efficiencies from being able to build and monitor while deploying everywhere without losing the ability to localize. Peter Riz echoed this point (39:59), highlighting that the cloudâs software-centric nature is key, since it makes service features programmable, and it is this programmability that allows for centralization without compromising localization. However, Peter also highlighted that this depends on having the right architecture (41:09) â just moving the same stack to the cloud will likely result in a failed transformation. Instead, you should look to individually programmable microservices.
 Both panelists had some final words of advice worth considering. For Peter, the message was simple â maintain your focus (45:44) and learn from each step, since you canât hope to follow all the changes in such a rapidly evolving market. Pedro highlighted the use of aggregated data to provide a holistic view across your service (47:27). He also highlighted the need to decouple the user experience from the technology, allowing you to evolve the technology without negatively impacting the consumer.
The Cloud TV Suite from Comcast Technology Solutions provides the ideal platform for these kinds of digital-first transformations.
Here you can read about how we can help your business to think digital-first.Â
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Customer Connections Newsletter July
SIMPLIFY POST-PRODUCTION FOR MULTIPLATFORM AD CREATIVE
Advertising production is an increasingly complex component of delivery, and many layers of specialization are required.
From file prep and media management to quality control and distribution, you need access to a team that provides personalized solutions and evolving technologies and products.
Professional post-production services combined with centralized ad management simplify and unify creative, talent, and distribution workflows across channels. Production Solutions from Comcast Technology Solutions offers advertisers and agencies visibility and control of their campaigns, along with real-time creative intelligence that enables creative optimization, targeting, and ROI.
Production Solutions fuels creative intelligence and drives ROI.
Get to knowâŚLes Brown
He began his career as a Tape Operator for TCI and worked his way up to Master Control and the Dub Encode Group of Operations. Six years ago, he joined the Advertising Solutions team, where he was promoted to Supervisor of the Production Services team.
Every opportunity he gets, you will find him enjoying time with his family, fishing with his wife, listening to music of all genres, cooking, and traveling abroad.
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MVPDs: Down-To-Earth Distribution For Rural Areas
Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) in smaller, rural areas have more options than ever before to stay competitive â including creative approaches to their media delivery and distribution models.
Back in April we gave an overview in this blog around the repurposing of C-band spectrum for 5G services and how itâs impacting the delivery models of providers across the United States. Providers have big questions to answer, such as âdo we transition to the new satellite and essentially take a business-as-usual approach, or can we do things differently to improve services and costs?â
These MVPDs relied on satellite services initially because it was the only effective, reliable way to receive programming transmissions to serve their region. Itâs still a viable option; satellites are here to stay â theyâre a vital and growing part of our communications infrastructure. Many of these providers, however, now have a ground-based option that was previously unavailable. It could be the right time to stop âdoing dishesâ and transition to a ground game.
TERRESTRIAL VS. SATELLITE DELIVERY â WHATâS THE DIFFERENCE? Â
A high-level discussion about satellite delivery is a horrible pun; but as Nick Nielsen, Fellow, from Comcast Technology Solutions explains it:
âAt a really simplified level, when youâre talking about terrestrial vs. satellite, essentially itâs this: somewhere thereâs video. We need to get it to the cable plant so it can be sent to subscribers.
Cable plants distribute digital cable TV via a QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signal; basically, you take video content in the form of MPEG transport streams, split up into 188-byte packets that go through this QAM modulator â like a modem â converting them into an analog format that then gets broadcast out on a wire.
From there, everyone at home who has digital cable has a de-modulator in their set-top box that tunes to the frequency or channel you want to watch. The MPEG packets are re-assembled and sent to a decoder, and turned into the image and sound you see on-screen.
The big change is the back-end piece â youâve got to get that signal to the plant. With satellite delivery, itâs the satellite that beams the information to a dish at the cable plant. Terrestrial delivery replaces the satellite part of the process with broadband IP networking (typically fiber). Imagine youâre a media company with programming, or an entire channel worth of video, and you need to get it to several local cable plants. All these transmissions need to be aggregated and assembled into the channels and high-quality experiences that ultimately get delivered to consumers. Weâre not even getting into deeper-dive compression conversations â thereâs a lot more that goes into it but thatâs the basic story.â
THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF THE CABLE PLANT
Cable plants receive content from all over the place to make this happen, and it can be expensive. It used to take a farm of satellite dishes in a field to acquire all these signals. Thatâs a lot of physical equipment to maintain. Nielsen continues: âOur HITS (Headend In The Sky, now known as Managed Satellite Distribution) business was set up in the 90âs as a means of pre-compressing and pre-bundling signals in a set of satellite transponders that could be transmitted and received with one dish instead of dozens. There are still limitations to the amount of programming that can be bundled and sent via satellite â the spectrum we lease has a fixed bandwidth so there comes a point where, if a provider wants to offer a new channel, they may need to decide which existing channel needs to be swapped out. Think of the connection between satellite and plant as a pipe with finite amount of data that can fit into it. Transponder bandwidth is fixed, which makes adding services or channels a more significant business decision.
A terrestrial-based solution just takes the satellite out of the equation. If I, as an MVPD, can connect point A to point B via the internet, private fiber networks, etc. â adding more channels becomes more of a straightforward bandwidth question. Weâve got over 250 channels available through our managed satellite distribution solutions, but providers only need bandwidth for the channels they use. Terrestrial delivery gives providers scalability and flexibility they may not have enjoyed before.â
Itâs also important to note that satellite service isnât inherently two-way; itâs a way to receive signal. Itâs hard to add dynamic services in a broadcast-only environment. Things like video on-demand, ad insertion, interactive experiences; anything thatâs on a per-person level needs the two-way medium that the internet provides. Moving to a terrestrial model opens up the ability to eventually serve full-service IP video to consumers, which may seem a bit confusing if you donât understand the difference (I didnât, until Nick explained it to me).
FROM TERRESTRIAL TO FULL IP DELIVERY
âSometimes the terms can be a bit overloaded,â explains Nielsen. âWeâve explained how terrestrial delivery supplants the satellite feed in the current operating model. But, once youâve done that, it opens up more opportunities. The cable headend is receiving signal via IP, but itâs still meant for QAM distribution pretty much the way itâs being done today. When youâre talking about moving over to IP video, now what youâre talking about is IP video thatâs being delivered directly to mobile devices, streaming sticks, whatever. Itâs not a QAM-modulated signal, itâs true internet protocol, and much more individualized.â
To help you visualize: Broadcast sends everything out all at once: if youâre an MVPD with 200 channels available, users tune into what they want, but every available channel is still being sent. IP video is a much more efficient use of the connective resources; only delivering whatâs being requested by users. When you watch a program on your phone, for example, your streaming service isnât sending you their entire catalog â just the content you are viewing. Bandwidth gets precious when you start thinking about all the other connected services a home might want to utilize; the IP video model accomplishes this, freeing up bandwidth resources that can be used for faster speeds and more services.
The C-band transition isnât a wholesale change to that model in and of itself. Itâs simply about satellite bandwidth thatâs going away, forcing providers to point to a different satellite and bandwidth to continue as they have. We can and are helping them to do that, but now thereâs on-the-ground infrastructure in place that offers an alternative that didnât previously exist. MVPDs are in a unique situation where average screen time per user is going up, but subscribers to any service have more choices than ever before. Fortunately, MVPDs have more choices, too.
Listen to Jill Mayâs presentation on Managed Distribution during the CTS Connects Summit here.
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