The DPP in 2020: helping to build intelligent businesses

How will smart media companies make their business decisions in 2020? How will a broadcaster’s CTO decide which new technology areas are worthy of their team’s attention? How will a software product manager decide on the strategic direction for their product, in order to meet the needs of their customers and prospects? The answer? They’ll need the best industry intelligence.

So how can they get that industry intelligence? Of course, they can try to stay on top of the latest news online, and to attend a range of industry events, trade shows and conferences. But how will they filter commercial interests from genuine insight, and join the dots of disconnected viewpoints?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could access the combined expertise of hundreds of companies from right across the media supply chain? How about if they had access to a team of unbiased industry professionals who could survey those experts, and share in-depth explorations of the topics that matter most to our industry? All without spending on consultancy fees, of course.

Wouldn’t that enable smarter decision making?

This is exactly the challenge we’ve set ourselves at the DPP when planning our work for 2020: to ensure we are the team that is providing the business intelligence that decision makers really need. More than ever, we’re connecting together our events, insight, and technical work, to deliver the highest quality support for DPP member companies. We give each of our member companies the benefit of the incredible expertise to be found within nearly 400 other member companies.

Most of our work sits at the intersection of business and technology, so we’re expanding the range of DPP research and insight to cover both of those areas in more detail. We’re listening to members’ challenges, exploring which are common across the industry, and understanding how to shape solutions. This information will be shared in DPP reports and events, and will inform our technical delivery work, such as common specifications and workflow guidance.

Three hot topics

So which topics are on the agenda? Here’s a taster of just three on which we’ve already begun work.

Next Generation Content Supply Chain
For years the media industry has been talking about the opportunity to move its key processes in the creation, management, exchange and distribution of content to the cloud. Such a transformation would enable the use of software based tools that would bring greater agility, flexibility and efficiency, along with the detailed analytics required to make informed business decisions. But to what extent is the industry now ready for this new way of working? And to what extent is it already being adopted? This unique maturity assessment comes from in-depth interviews with leaders from major companies at the cutting edge of the supply chain revolution.

Scaling IP Distribution
At a DPP at Home event in May, we asked if – or perhaps when – we will get to a fully IP future for the distribution of content. 96% of attendees felt that the transition would be at least somewhat problematic, with 59% seeing it as very or extremely problematic. One of the top challenges identified was infrastructure scaling for peak loads of major live events. But which technologies will help us cope? Multicast, peer-to-peer, 5G, and edge computing are all touted as solutions. But what’s real, what’s coming, and where should you focus attention? This technical insight report tells you exactly what you need to know.

Delivering to Video On Demand
The number of platforms for on-demand video content has increased exponentially in the last decade. So have the number of suppliers of online video content, and the range of devices on which such content is created. Content creators, distributors, and platforms report growing complexity in the online video delivery chain. But to what extent is this growing complexity a problem that needs solving? And is there is a need and appetite for industry wide intervention to smooth the process? We’re undertaking a piece of in-depth research to provide the first ever real-world picture of delivery to VoD, to identify the pain points, and to find out if they can be cured.

And much, much more

These three new pieces of exclusive insight are just for starters. Even before we say goodbye to 2019, DPP members will have benefitted from our groundbreaking report on cloud-led production, Next Gen Production; our industry-leading business intelligence event, the Tech Leaders’ Briefing; and the announcement of a brand new industry wide initiative. We’ll continue to support the implementation of IMF for Broadcast and Online, and our Live IP Profiles, and grow our Committed to Security Programme. And we already have further technical and business insight pieces planned around the challenge of architecting for the cloud, and building new customer-supplier relationships.

Every one of these pieces of work has come from the conversations we have with DPP members. And that’s because we see ourselves as an extension of their own teams – here to support their businesses at a time of huge and rapid change. It’s a privilege.