How to benefit from Streaming as a managed service

You are an organisation – a business, a house of worship, a sports team, even a regional broadcaster or producer – and you are building up a library of video content. You are confident that there is an audience for this content, and sharing it with them will bring them closer into your community, and maybe even raise some valuable revenue.

The problem is that you have little experience in streaming, and feel that the learning curve and the continuing operational costs of staffing an operation mean that the gains from streaming your content might be marginal. The solution lies in a managed OTT or VOD platform: by outsourcing your streaming and video on demand offering, you benefit from the operator’s economy of scale, giving you a clear, stable and predictable cost base.

What should you expect from a managed platform? Under your guidance, it should take on all the underlying tasks.

The content itself must be managed, to keep track of what you have, when you can use it and how you can offer it to your audience. So there must be an OTT CMS, a content management system. You will also need to protect the intellectual property in the content, whether you produce it yourself or acquire it from other producers. So you need DRM, a digital rights management system, which tracks who sees the content and under what conditions.

Your audience needs to find the content they want, and you need to drive them towards the latest or most important videos. So the consumer-facing user interface must be attractive and easy to navigate. This is an area where you will want to retain control, making new content prominent and keeping the site refreshed, so there has to be a simple way for you to edit the screens, using drag and drop and direct links to the CMS.

Modern OTT platforms should allow live streaming as well as VoD. If you are a broadcaster you might simulcast your television output; a house of worship could transmit services live. So your platform should also provide managed broadcast. Setting the schedule should be simple, and playout fully automated.

If you are looking to raise revenue from your services, then you will want to ensure that advertising management and ad insertion is a part of the service.

Finally, a managed services host will run the complete service in the cloud. That includes content distribution networks (CDN) to reach the audience, as well as management of uplinks and storage to minimise costs from the cloud operator. It should also ensure that each client’s content, schedules and audience data is kept securely firewalled from other users, to guarantee complete security.

The good news is that all of this is available from PlayBox Technology. We started out in broadcast automation, so we intimately understand the whole channel process, and how to apply automation securely and reliably.

We have a packaged managed services offering, which allows you to assemble the functionality you need. Because PlayBox is providing these services for multiple clients, each individual pays a fraction of the costs of setting up and running their own service.

PlayBox’s long history in the industry means you can be sure of its reputation. There is no question that the company can be trusted to run your OTT service.

Should you make the step? There are at least three reasons why you must be seen online as a VoD and live streaming presence.

First, audiences today expect it, whatever sort of organisation you are. They will search for you online, and that is the place to capture them.

Second, using a managed services platform from a trusted partner like PlayBox means you have the lowest possible cost base and enhanced monetisation opportunities, so you maximise the potential earnings.

Third, it raises awareness and loyalty in your audience. Whether you are a broadcaster talking to a broad audience, a house of worship seeking to enrich your congregation, a sports team rewarding its fan base or a commercial company securing customer loyalty, an online video presence, presented professionally and easy to access, is vital.