Amsterdam – September 9th, 2016: Sony and Swiss telecommunications operator, Swisscom, have today announced the start of a strategic partnership to jointly design innovative data solutions that streamline live production workflows for the broadcast industry. The Sony and Swisscom collaboration is utilizing scalable data and advanced connectivity to explore a range of new content experiences free from the constraints of physical hardware, on-site logistics and upfront equipment investments.

An early outcome of Sony and Swisscom’s partnership was the successful implementation of production workflow at the Locarno International Film Festival, held at the beginning of August as a proof of concept. By combining an IP-based production setup in Swisscom’s Zurich datacenter with LTE/4G video streaming over Swisscom’s mobile network from Sony’s acclaimed XDCAMPXW-X200/X400/X500 camcorders on-site in Locarno, the team was able to reduce the entire production turnaround time to just ten minutes, whereas historically the shoot-to-upload process had taken as much as six hours.
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​A tailored Sony IP-based production facility was installed in Swisscom’s datacenter in Zurich, enabling editing, audio and mastering functions to be fully managed via the web, as opposed to being delivered by an on-site team with special appliances.
​ The success of this year’s production follows an initial project at the 2015 Locarno International Film Festival, where Sony and Swisscom partnered to equip three Sony XDCAM cameras with LTE/4G dongles, enabling the film crew to capture the unique festival spirit beyond the traditional restrictions of SDI cables – by streaming over Swisscom’s LTE/4G mobile network. By extending the use of files in Swisscom’s datacenter, this year’s setup has established a proven remote news production facility for event managers, small and large broadcasters throughout Europe to consider on a pay-as-needed basis.

As part of the build-up of their strategic partnership, Sony and Swisscom are working closely on a series of proof-of-concept projects, utilising Sony’s Media Backbone Hive, to explore how connectivity and cloud technologies can modernise production workflows. Media Backbone Hive leverages the latest IT technologies, built using datacentre infrastructure, to deliver a complete news production workflow and gives media companies the opportunity to truly excel in content creation by empowering their creative teams. Hive is dynamically scalable, drives better management of operational costs, as well as lowering total cost of ownership and avoids unnecessary investment in underutilised resource.
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​“Cloud-based production is a game-changer for content creators and owners, allowing production teams to rethink the way they access, process and distribute their media,” said Urs Lehner, Head of Sales & Services for Enterprise Customers, Swisscom. “This isn’t just a case of new technologies, but of new commercial opportunities for customers to introduce service models which move from CapEx to OpEx. Swisscom chose Sony as a strategic partner for its industry leading technology and expertise. That, combined with our operational capabilities and cloud infrastructure alignments, provide a unique and flexible proposition for our joint customers.”
​ “Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen Cloud move from a position of ‘great potential’ in news production terms to one of ‘great delivery’. The speed-to-air improvements enjoyed by Locarno this year are a staggering case of point, and have been driven from a production model which has the dual benefit of reduced capital expenditure,” said Michael Harrit, Marketing Director, Sony Professional Solutions Europe. “The convergence of IT, telco and broadcast R&D is helping content communities do things quicker, smarter and more efficiently. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Swisscom to develop services that bring the technology innovations of these industries to our customers, in ways that deliver against the high-pressure requirements of live content production.”
​ For more detail on Sony solutions, please visit: pro.sony.eu.