Harmonic, Signiant and Open Text Join Microsoft for Digital Content Management

A collaborative group of technology providers, Harmonic, Open Text, and Signiant, working with Microsoft announced at NAB 2009 the demonstration of an open and integrated approach to providing ways for media and entertainment companies (M&E) to produce, manage, protect, distribute and store digital content.

"I am pleased to see this collaborative approach being taken to address a critical need in the market," said Bart Palmer, Senior Vice President of Media Engineering, Discovery Communications. "As an early technology adopter, Discovery has traditionally had to build interoperable solutions ourselves, being able to leverage out-of-the-box integration from these best of breed products will enable us to significantly lower cost and bring innovative solutions to our users faster."

Microsoft, Harmonic, Open Text Digital Media Group, and Signiant worked in conjunction to provide a collaborative digital production and distribution solution enabling M&E companies to overcome the common technical challenges of managing and moving digital assets. The collaborative solution is different because it uses an open, service oriented architecture so customers can integrate applications into their current IT infrastructure. This provides a single interface for managing digital content every step of the way - from production and editing to distribution and archiving.

"The rapid rate of change in the global media and entertainment industry makes it difficult for media and entertainment companies to quickly create products that enable them to take full advantage of new opportunities and channels," said Jake Winett, Global Industry Manager for Media & Entertainment in the Communications Sector at Microsoft. "By integrating our core server technologies, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, with our partners' applications, we have developed a digital content management solution that provides more flexible workflows and improves collaboration for media and entertainment companies."

"This collaboration will give M&E companies a technology advantage so they can better optimize emerging revenue streams found on the Web, on mobile devices and in new formats such as high-definition," said Damian Saccocio, VP, Product Marketing, Open Text Digital Media Group. "This collaborative solution is all about helping M&E companies find the true value of their content."

"The companies involved in this open collaborative model are dedicated to helping M&E customers get rid of cumbersome old methodologies that make it difficult for digital content to be utilized to its fullest potential," said David Trescot, Vice President of the Rhozet Business Unit at Harmonic. "An important part of this approach then is making sure one digital format can be translated and converted to another."

"We are able to quickly and cost effectively move and transform enormous digital files over the WAN to speed the process of getting content where it needs to be: in front of audiences," said Robert Browne, Founder and Vice President of Business Development, Signiant. "It doesn't matter if that audience is in a movie theater or watching a video on the web."

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