News

posted on 14 April 2008 08:30

Reflecting the fact that storage and networking technologies have raced ahead of many media companies' complex legacy environments, IBM has introduced a service offering to bring their storage and digital data processes into the modern age.

IBM's Management Complexity Factor for Media (MCFM) is a set of evaluation procedures, processes and technologies that IBM acquired when it bought NovusCG in October last year. These are now part of IBM's Global Technology Services organisation which IBM is offering to media companies as a kind of quasi-insourcing scheme under which GST people evaluate a media company's digital storage and transmission assets and processes.

The basic concept is that many media companies are using legacy processes that take too long to deliver media files to the editing suites, store the digital assets too expensively, and slow down decision-making about which video clips to use in particular situations.

Steve Canepa, IBM's VP for media and entertainment, said: "Media companies are facing a double-edged sword with the exponential rise in digital media storage needs, coupled with concerns about optimizing storage to be more efficient. By quickly and cost-effectively analyzing the interconnected IT and storage environments that increasingly comprise media operations, MCF for Media helps our clients identify opportunities for improvement and align their IT and business strategies."

There has to be a better way of storing images than this.

This is no quick fix. An initial evaluation, using questionnaires and interviews, is followed by the development of a customised plan for the next two or three years with GST people monitoring progress and making revisions as needed. IBM says that by speeding up digital media workflows; for example, by replacing the air mail delivery of video tapes with network transmission of digital files, and by speeding up video clip search and retrieval, hundreds of thousands of dollars locked up in outmoded processes can be released and the business can generate more money from its media assets more quickly.

In effect IBM is offering a digital media processing makeover involving all aspects of the assets and processes involved. It is a root and branch consultancy scheme. There is no silver bullet but IBM is saying there will be, there should be, gold at the end of the MCFM rainbow.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}