IBC 2022 was super busy and energetic. With around 1,000 exhibitors welcoming over 37,000 visitors from 170 countries, IBC proved that it is still the place to celebrate innovation, inspiration for learning and stimulate collaboration. It was a really well-received event for the Agama team and probably everyone else in the video industry, a perfect mix of interesting topics, people and content.
It was difficult to anticipate what it would be like to exhibit again after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. We had no idea whether the event would be successful or not, but we had nothing to fear, we had an amazing four days at IBC. We had fruitful meetings with industry colleagues, added another award to our trophy cabinet, gave a public presentation and got to showcase our new products and features to our customers and partners.
This was the first year that Agama was located in Hall 1, offering us a new perspective on the show. Across all four days, our stand was always filled with customers, potential prospects and people who stopped by to learn more about our products and solutions. Our new location offered us the opportunity to be closer to other tech companies in our industry and gave us the visibility we were looking for.
Launching Sustainability Analytics
We announced our latest initiative – Sustainability Analytics. This new offering represents a step forward for video providers that want to work in a data-driven way, helping them simplify reporting, insight generation and decision making. Available as-a-service, it is designed to simplify roll-out for non-technical stakeholders by analysing fine-grained usage metrics per service, device or app, while presenting trends and breakdowns of energy use over time. Its goal is to streamline the understanding of the environmental impact and to support the analysis of how different decisions will affect it.
And the award goes to…
We were also proud to return home with a trophy. We won the CSI Award with our Elastic Analyzer in the category Best monitoring or network management solution. So, what’s so remarkable about the Elastic Analyzer? It gives video service providers the flexibility they need to have the right monitoring capabilities and capacity, where they need it and when they need it. This award was a much-welcomed recognition of the first-class products we create for our customers.
Anders Svensson presents
Another IBC highlight was that Anders Svensson, Co-founder & Senior Fellow at Agama, was invited to give a presentation at the SCTE Benelux conference. Anders talked about structured analytics for NPS video performance and how customer experience can be improved by taking a systematic approach and combining insights from the entire user base. This video presentation can be watched here https://bit.ly/3S2leMF.
The trends dominating IBC 2022
If we look at the dominant tech trends at IBC 2022, we saw the FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming TV services) channels becoming increasingly popular. In essence, this is streaming live TV without a subscription. FAST channels go beyond traditional TV services, such as cable and satellite, to internet-connected devices. They offer dynamic ad insertion into streaming services, making them free for users who do not want a subscription service.
We also heard the word sustainability popping up more often. Sustainability is now a major concern for everyone in the video and streaming industry. We saw a clear shift towards searching for more sustainable streaming methods to cope with the increasingly high demands for reduced energy consumption and carbon footprint. Many companies, including Agama, are now working towards providing solutions that are in line with this concept and we expect to see more related news in the near future.
Meanwhile, big data, ABR and cloud transformation remain hot topics year after year. The usage of big data is now critical, especially when providing customer insights and understanding customer experience. ABR technology has a major role to play in the current and future networks as it helps avoid congestion while providing optimal quality video streaming. Finally, cloud transformation is a concept adopted by many industry players, regardless of their size, and it’s a trend that will likely remain en vogue for years to come, as it provides lots of benefits when compared to traditional in-house models.
IBC has returned to being one of the most important dates in the industry calendar. We would like to thank all of you – our customers, partners and industry colleagues – for taking the time to meet with us at IBC. We’re already looking forward to next year’s event!
About Dora Voicu
Dora is driving global marketing at Agama by developing the right strategies to help customers understand the value of Agama’s offerings and the benefits for their business. She brings more than 18 years of telecom and video experience to the company.
