Why we built it ourselves

IABM’s most recent Buying Trends Survey found that end-users are building 40% of the products/solutions they need using in-house or contract resources, and the outlook is for this to increase to around 50% in 2-3 years.

In the ‘Why we built it ourselves’ session at the IABM Annual Conference, Red Bee Media, Réseau Vià and Volucap Studio spoke about why they have taken the build it yourself (BIY) path, what they achieved and how technology vendors can play a part in the process.

Red Bee Media: Building a relationship with vendors
Alex Dubiez, head of global playout and studio solutions at broadcast and media services provider Red Bee Media, opened the session.

He said: “We have to meet a new paradigm – ready to consume, on-demand, interconnected. This has an impact on the whole value chain, starting with the audience and working all the way back through broadcasters and media companies to service providers and integrators to technology vendors.

“Beyond technology and beyond innovation, it is the very relationship between these groups which is impacting things. What we need is more collaboration – more interactivity.”

Dubiez went on to give two examples where greater collaboration would help everyone.

“The first is how we build solutions today – we need off-the-shelf building blocks which are far more flexible than monolithic architectures.”

This means vendors need to get their products ready to onboard a services supply chain – building blocks that fit seamlessly into the space between the infrastructure and control layers.

“Vendors need to ensure that…