Service Oriented Media Enterprise
Another NAB down, this has to be my 11th or 12th show and it's starting to feel a bit repetitive. One thing that did perk my interest at this year's show was a book. I always look forward to visiting the NAB book store to see what is new and pick up one of the latest broadcast reference compilations, but this time I spotted something different.
Since 2005, my team has been working to push web services standards into the broadcast and media industries on behalf of Microsoft. The first iteration of that was a project called Connected Services Framework for Media. My current project is an asset management system based on web services and Semantic Web standards called Interactive Media Manager. Throughout the journey I have met many smart people at NAB, but I have always looked forward to running into those who shared a similar, IT-based vision of the future for the M&E market.
I was so pleased when I saw John Footen's and Joey Faust's new book "The Service Oriented Media Enterprise". John is the Vice President of National TeleConsultants Software Solutions Group and high on my list of people that I wait to run into at NAB each year. We don't always agree on which technology stack to use, but that is beside the point. The point is that the industry should begin to adopt more open standards that enable interoperability and ease of integration between systems in complex workflows. This will lead to more manageable and reliable IT-based solutions in the broadcast industry. This is increasingly important as the whole industry moves to end-to-end file based workflows. John is a strong believer in this vision of Web Services and I was also excited to see that on page 493 he and Joey also recognize the need for Semantics in a media SOA.
"Semantic standards and technologies attempt to capture the true, human-understandable meaning behind all of those countless metadata standards and models."
"The Semantic Web is a powerful idea that is taking the IT industry by storm. The M&E industry, since it already deals so heavily in the creative expression of data and meaning, should take note and find ways to leverage the semantic technologies currently out there to develop enhanced library and asset management systems."
Thanks John for making my NAB a lot more interesting this year.
- John Deutscher (john.deutscher@microsoft.com)
