For some people, the idea of innovation is a scientist slaving a way in a room until they have a 'eureka' moment at which point they bestow this new found invention upon society. But this is to overlook how most innovation happens – as part of a tight team of people in different organisations who collectively work out the path before building infrastructure and product features to move forward.
At this year’s IBC, Sky was awarded the IBC Innovation Award for Content Distribution which names Techex as one of three partners who were foundational to the success of their new cloud-native, group-wide playout platform. But our role in the project was more than simply delivering tx edge as a product to Sky.
To understand the importance of this project, we need to recognise the significance of a ‘group-wide’ solution. The Sky Group comprises Sky UK, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia which all started operations independently, Sky UK being the first company to launch in the late ‘80s. Sky Deutschland was independent until it was acquired by Sky in 2008 and Sky Italia was launched by Sky as a joint venture in the early 2000s. It was only in 2015 that both Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia joined Sky UK under one entity which we now call Sky Group.
Bringing the company together under common foundations was the strategy explained by David Travis, Group Director of Content, Broadcast & Platforms at Sky at AWS Re:Invent 2022. David outlined the need, first and foremost, to align the organisations across the different companies only then being able to move to a technology transformation. This transformation, the results of which we see in this Innovation Award, was intent on bringing in a single technology platform for all countries using a distributed model.
At Techex, we have long seen the promise of software in broadcast. Written with security and scalability first and foremost in the design tx edge was first released six years ago. As an IP gateway, tx edge enables reliable transport of high-value content with robust resilience and in-depth monitoring. We are honoured that tx edge has found a home at many tier-1 broadcasters, including Sky, so it was natural when the cloud playout project started that tx edge would play a critical role in monitoring and transporting playout output back on-prem for downstream systems.
Techex’s decade-long history with Sky means that we work daily with engineers across the organisation meaning we were able to work as an extension of Sky’s teams in the design and delivery of the system alongside the other named vendors. Indeed, IBC Chair of Judges Fergal Ringrose endorsed Sky’s win emphasising the partnership involved, “The judging panel recognised Sky Group’s ambition and collaboration with tech partners, directly leading to increased speed to market, improved security and sustainability, and the creation of a leaner less stressful operational environment.”
The move to software is what has enabled Sky to so effectively bring together teams across Europe, to increase efficiency, to reduce carbon emissions, reduce time to market and add flexibility to their platform. We believe that in a software world, broader collaboration with software vendors is more vital than ever to enable the rich, tightly-integrated infrastructure that a world-class broadcaster such as Sky needs. But most importantly, our close and ongoing relationship with Sky’s teams is what enabled us to be part of the innovation award and is what allows us to continue improving tx edge and Sky’s playout infrastructure into 2024 and beyond.
