INTERVIEW: Davide Sabbion, SI Media pre-sales manager for APAC
BroadcastAsia exhibition is around the corner so we take this occasion to talk about Asian market with Davide Sabbion, SI Media pre-sales manager for APAC, in charge of SI Media branch offices in Singapore and Bangkok.
Q: This is a special year for SI Media, isn’t it?
A: Yes, absolutely! We are proud to say that this year we celebrate our 40th anniversary, 40 years of experience, innovations and successful stories. Growing year by year, SI Media is now one of the few companies able to provide an End-to-End software solution (NRCS-MAM-Automation-BMS), with installations in every corner of the planet, from Europe, to Africa, South East Asia, Japan, Russia, Caribbean and Central America. Speaking about APAC, we have to mention also the new branch office in Thailand: it’s a matter of fact that a customer is more confident when sales and support services can be provided locally, that’s why the new office is a key-point for the business in Southeast Asian Indochinese peninsula.
Q: What are you showcasing at this year exhibition?
A: We are proud to show the results of the OEM agreement between us and Harmonic Inc.: Neva, our video-server powered by Harmonic and controlled via proprietary API by SI Media automation system. Besides that, during BroadcastAsia we will present the latest news of our turnkey solution, such as the Web Proxy Editor and the integration of SI Media MAM with AI (Artificial Intelligence), useful, for instance, to analyze and convert audio into a subtitle or to recognize explicit contents. I’m sure that this integration will be very useful here, into APAC area, where broadcasters have to daily work with censure and profanity.
Q: Are there some specific requests from Asian customers?
A: Here in Asia the market is heavily pushing towards 4k contents management and IP transmission, more than other regions. For instance, it’s not news that Japan has announced its intent to broadcast 8K by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Furthermore, speaking about IP transmission, almost all the countries here already have a high-quality mobile network, this means that the broadcasters and telco operators are ready to invest since also the audience is there, on-the-go. This is true also for silver surfers, not only for kids! An important topic related to IP is the Cloud: SI Media, besides being one of the few software house able to provide and end-to-end IP workflow, is natively ready for the virtualization and for the cloud. Finally, the experience gained with the social media allow our automation playouts to be multiple endpoints, both towards classic media and new media such as Facebook and Twitter Live, YouTube, Livestream and many more. Last but not least, thanks to our customer’s feedback, we have improved and updated our censor module, a specific tool created for Asian market, fully integrated with our MAM and Traffic system.
Q: And regarding next steps?
A: Broadcasting market is rapidly changing: we have to continue the development of our platform, in order to maintain our high-technology standards, adding all the features needed to offer a complete and updated platform to our customers. Now, with stable and well known references inside the APAC area we are ready to land to other countries, such as Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Hong Kong, countries where we are already in touch with local distributors and system integrators.
… because this year we celebrate the 40th anniversary but we look forward to the next 40!
See you next week, in Singapore.
