evergent-streak-1blog-bg-for-tablets
Blog

A CTO’s Perspective on People, Product, Cloud

March 21, 2018

  • cloud
  • company culture
  • extensibility
  • hybrid public cloud
  • infrastructure
  • native architectures
  • OTT
  • scalability
  • SLAs
  • subscription management
  • TVE
  • uptime
  • user lifecycle management
  • video service providers

Non-Functional Infrastructure Requirements for World-class OTT and TVE
Security, uptime, scalability, and extensibility are critical to achieving world-class OTT and TVE monetization. These “non-functional” requirements cover two broad areas — execution qualities such as security and usability and evolution qualities such as scalability, extensibility, and maintainability. The evolution qualities are architecture-dependent. But all of these require the right people, cloud infrastructure, and software to come together. In fact, it is the people and culture that will drive your success. And it requires both people with industry expertise and broad technical backgrounds.

I believe that technical knowledge of niche skills is paramount to the success of the organization — individuals with strong leadership skills can apply those skills to any industry. And for organizations like yours to achieve success in the digital era, you require people with broad technical experience in security and scalability. It should be noted, that having a great company culture provides an effective shared experience and can help your organization be successful. That said, here are some execution qualities and evolution qualities for world-class OTT and TVE.

Execution Qualities

Strong execution requires a combination of inputs including the product, the cloud, and also the people that build and service the platform. As an example, experience and expertise in hybrid public cloud infrastructure is critical for being able to meet strict Service Level Agreements.

Evolution Qualities

Just as important, applications need to scale effectively and be responsive and performant in stressful conditions. Uptime and redundancies are required across multiple geographies. For example, an SLA can specify that systems remain up for 99.99% of the time, or, what is known as four nines.

As cloud platforms becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful, they offer far more opportunities for efficiency and growth. Services can be scaled up very quickly — an important requirement for live-event TV.

Modern, cloud-native architectures are also key to providing platform agility. Managed cloud services resting on a mature, well-architected SaaS platform can bring two key benefits. First, speed-to-market, and second, the low total cost of ownership.

Other Considerations Include:

Data workflows, exchange, and analytics capabilities — this may include custom APIs for weaving data directly into tax compliance, royalty settlement, or data analysis tools. Read about our TaxCalc, a sales and use tax solution here.
Dealing with operator integration and advanced data warehouse integrations. As society becomes more digital, the volume and value of that ‘digital exhaust’ have become essential to all industries and to functions including marketing, finance, operations, and sales.
Having basic, advanced and customized reporting — particularly as OTT and TVE becomes more competitive.
- - - - - - -

Want to learn more about these infrastructure areas? Read “The Blueprint for Best-in-Class Video Subscriber Management.” It offers insights from industry experts on a range of topics including user acquisition, engagement, and retention; identity, payments, entitlements, packaging, promotions, and customer care; and all offered on secure cloud services.

Learn more about the Evergent User Lifecycle Management Platform here.