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.

Author: Per Skyttvall, CEO of Dreampark