The Egyptian telecommunications market generated US$6.4 billion in service revenue in 2010, having grown at 21% CAGR over the previous two years, according to Pyramid Reserach. And, while this period represents the peak growth phase, Pyramid suggests the country will remain one of the fastest growing markets in Africa and the Middle East going forward, mainly due to the promise of increased mobile broadband penetration and the value added services that high speed internet access can bring. Point Topic identifies a similar trend, indicating that the mobile telephony and broadband segments are starting to overtake all other telecommunication segments in the country.
In this busy emerging African market, our Dreamgallery™ middleware solution will power IPTV services from Egyptian Advanced Multimedia Systems, an Egyptian provider of IPTV services. The Nilesat Satellite will be used to transmit the multicast streams and VOD content to Regional Headends in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf area, and EAMS project is expected to implement an average of 50 regional head ends every year for the first five years of operation.
After numerous successful deployments in Europe and mainly in developed markets, we are excited to extend our reach to offer Dreamgallery’s flexibility for regionalized administration and customization needed for this type of operator such as EAMS. Based on the dynamic nature of our platform and its ability to fit a variety of deployments, we look forward to helping more and more service providers to offer an exciting multimedia and content experience to viewers across the region.
Taking a quick look around the Internet, from Twitter to blogs to sites like Television Without Pity, it’s clear that people love their TV. And second to wanting unlimited great content choices, they want to be able to find the content they want quickly and easily. The middleware’s job is to help users find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
First, the middleware needs to be proactive. Rather than waiting for the user to search for a specific program or topic, the middleware can incorporate recommendations and provide an attractive and engaging UI that captures the user’s interests and leads them to relevant content.
Second, middleware needs to be intuitive. Just as navigation on the computer and on websites with great design is natural and enjoyable, TV navigation should let users focus on what they want to watch rather than how to get to it.
Finally, middleware should be unobtrusive to the user. Everyone says they have great ease of usability, but the interface needs to be hardly noticeable to the subscribers to that they feel right at home when they sit down and begin browsing programs and channels. The user shouldn’t even think about navigating the interface as it works seamlessly to get them where they want to be. We believe there are no limits to what can be achieved and that middleware should be able to do anything that can be done on the web.
Keeping in mind that TV Middleware is constantly asked for increased functionality, it is also extremely important that there is a way for operators to extend the offering. At Dreampark for example, we aim to meet this challenge by combining our Dreamgallery Portal Generator, a web-based What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor with a Software Development Kit, a set of tools that place the control right at the Operators fingertips. Dreamgallery middleware is dynamic so it doesn’t compromise speed or flexibility. We know it is important for our middleware to remember the end user and for that reason we keep it simple and intuitive for them to use. This will make it possible to launch new features matching the above criteria with an aggressive time to market.
This blog was also posted on the Official IBC 2010 Blog by Video Net News (on twitter: @videonetnews) and can be viewed here.
Author: Bjorn Lang, CTO
As the CTO of Dreampark, Bjorn has extensive experience from 20+ IPTV and hybrid deployments throughout EMEA.
We’re getting ready to fly over to London for IPTV World Forum next week. We were asked to write a guest blog for the IPTV World Forum official Show Blog on VideoNet (@videonetnews). It got us thinking about what all the operators out there need to do to differentiate themselves. Below is the blog we wrote with our thoughts about it (also on the VideoNet Official IPTV World Forum blog.
Flexibility is essential for operators and the middleware they use has to coexist with the STB, video server, encoder and other solutions that the operator is using. The need for a flexible interface is a necessity. The ability to support rapid development and add new hot features for the subscriber is the biggest concern for IPTV operators.
Some middleware vendors didn’t come from an IPTV background and they had to adapt for IPTV, sometimes at the expense of operators’ flexibility. We’ve noticed a trend where operators who already have one of these types of middleware solutions needs more flexible front-end solutions to integrate with their middleware providers’ back-end. Operators having a first generation middleware solution or a customized solution are often lacking the flexibility of doing changes in the portal, adding new applications or even to customizing the User Interface. This becomes increasingly important when competition among operators is getting tougher.
IPTV operators are confronted increased competition from cable and satellite. They are discovering that they need to add differentiating factors to attract and keep customers. What is lacking in most solutions is an administration tool that addresses this task and allows the Operator to be in control of both the Look-and-Feel and also the contents of the Portal.
Dreampark sees this opportunity for IPTV middleware solutions to create the most flexible solution available in order to help operators offer the best service to subscribers. We’ve taken the system one step further by allowing the operator to see the changes take effect in real-time on the actual device that is used by the subscribers, which they have noted is very important to them. Once the verification is done the Operator may publish the new additions and/or changes to all subscribers. Dreampark calls this “What-you-see-is-what-you-get.” Operators need to be able to create a business portal and push revenue generating opportunities to customers without a lot of help from the middleware provider. And, it’s easiest for them to do this if they can see what things will look like as they are adding to the portal in real-time.
Come visit us in Stand #169 at IPTV World Forum in London on March 23-25. We’ll be talking about our Front End solution designed to help operators get the maximum flexibility. Our front-end solution allows operators that already have a middleware solution in place to add new services in real-time and to really see what they are getting and exactly how it will look for the user. Operators running DreamgalleryTM software may fully control the business portal.
Visitors to IPTV World Forum will be able to demonstrate this solution and see how easily changes can be made to the Middleware instantly.
If you are interested in a meeting, please send an email to exhibition@dreampark.com.
If you are media or an analyst and would like to get a briefing from Dreampark at IPTV World Forum, please contact our PR representatives,
Alex Crabb or Jennifer Hicks at:
+1-617.956.2214 or +33 6 84 47 80 42
Alex@theinkstudio.com or Jennifer@theinkstudio.com
Twitter: alexcrabb and jennalee
Make sure you follow @DreamparkTV on twitter to get all our latest updates from the IPTV World Forum show floor and the inside scoop on whats happening inside our booth!
In the complex world of broadband television, there is no single component that has as much impact on the success and cost-effectiveness of a service as the middleware. The selection of the middleware platform is a key milestone in service roll out success.
The role of middleware is essentially to serve up the user interface, connect client devices, video servers and encoders, provide the administration interface, implement the business logic, store and submit the usage information, interface with the legacy systems (billing, CRM, authentication, NMS) and offer a platform to sustain a completely reliable service. Middleware maintains the equilibrium between stabilizing a mission-critical service with zero-tolerance for failure and simultaneously supporting a dynamic service allowing operators to incorporate new STBs, new video servers, new business rules and applications.
We’ve noticed a trend where operators who already have a middleware solution need more flexible front-end solutions to integrate with their middleware providers’ back-end. Operators having a first generation middleware solution or a customized solution are often lacking the flexibility of doing changes in the portal, adding new applications or even to customizing the User Interface etc. This becomes increasingly important when competition among operators is getting tougher.
Operators need to be able to add and change applications. What is lacking in most solutions is an administration tool that addresses this task and allows the Operator to be in control of both the Look-and-Feel and also the contents of the Portal. The Dreamgallery™ system takes this one step further in allowing the Operator to see the changes take effect in real-time on the actual Device that is used by the subscribers. Once the verification is done the Operator may publish the new additions and/or changes to all subscribers.Dreampark calls this “What-you-see-is-what-you-get.” Operators need to be able to create a business portal and push revenue generating opportunities to customers without a lot of help from the middleware provider. And, it’s easiest for them to do this if they can see what things will look like as they are adding to the portal in real-time.
Dreampark has taken the opportunity to create a front-end solution that will allow operators that already have a middleware solution in place to add new services in real-time and to really see what they are getting and exactly how it will look for the user. Operators running Dreamgallery™ software may fully control the business portal. This is could be the best thing to ever happen to an operator with regards to middleware. Freedom and flexibility is everything.
Post By: Bjorn Lang, chief technology officer, Dreampark
