Mark Wilson-Dunn, head of global sales and marketing for BT Media & Broadcast, explains how globalization is changing not only the infrastructure needs of media firms but also the production support they require
Daily: What's the biggest change going on in the industry‾
Wilson-Dunn: This is my second spell at BT as I originally joined in 1978 and worked there for 21 years so I've seen a lot. Without a doubt, it's the massive shift away from traditional methods of broadcasting, to digital solutions. A lot of the broadcasting industry still uses very 20th century manual processes. This is changing fast, and we're no longer asked how we can help clients increase bandwidth, but how they can implement and make the most of a digital media network.
The industry is now so fragmented that it needs to be able to send enormous amounts of content all over the world, and having a video-enabled global network means they can move contents around far more easily and quickly. As a result, they can build multi-faceted solutions that they couldn't have even considered a few years ago.
There's a massive demand in Asia for this new way of working, and Asia is one of our most important focuses right now - so much so, that we rolled out the Asian network, before Europe. As a result, a lot of Hollywood production processes, like DVD production, are moving over to this region. It's a hugely exciting time for the industry - and particularly in Asia.
How will that develop in the near future‾
Increasing globalization. It's not a new issue, but it's still a massively relevant one and presents an ongoing challenge for a lot of my clients, as it requires a strong infrastructure, like 21CN.
I can imagine other industries looking to the media and broadcast industry in the near future for guidance on how to work collaboratively. I can't think of any other industry where so many different companies come together for such a brief period of time, send enormous quantities of data to each other, manage all the content digitally, and then all suddenly go their own separate ways, and start work on the next project with someone new in another part of the world.
However, I think that the amount and extent of user-generated content might stabilize a little bit in the future, and that it will also be of a higher quality.
What brings you to CommunicAsia 2007‾
We're here to talk to media and broadcast companies and to let them know we can take the pain out of technology for them. We can help them transfer their productions around the world quickly on our network and build systems for them. We're also a media company ourselves - for example we now play and produce TV programs. We face the same issues that they face. Technology is a necessary evil for most of the companies here. It's getting more complex and costs are rising, so we can help them make it easier.
In what way‾
We work with all facets of the media and broadcast industry, pre- and post production, from broadcaster to service provider. We're working with a major broadcaster to turn 20,000 hours of film into a digital format and store it all digitally. It's a much safer method of storage and they now have a completely high-tech library and have consequently re-launched their website so that the public can watch the programming - all on demand.