Across the globe, virtually every industry that has digital content is in the midst of an enormous transition. Whether it is the transition from physical distribution to digital distribution, for archiving, for indexing, for business-to-business transactions or for end-user consumer product fulfillment, every aspect of how companies manage the distribution of digital content is being examined. The Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry is clearly in the midst of an enormous transition. Media conglomerates are implementing Media 360 programs, where content is made available on multiple distribution venues (e.g. terrestrial TV, satellite, broadband, mobile, etc.) and devices. Almost every day, new media-related business models appear, new business-to-business partners emerge, and the desire to have one's content available whenever a potential consumer desires is great. The Internet and the Web have combined to remove geographic and cultural barriers to digital content. If it is content of a type that is of interest to someone across the seven (or six, depending upon your schooling) continents, enabling technologies are combining to make that content available-in a timely fashion-to the consumer.

The stakes are high. It is no longer a theoretical exercise as to whether audience eyes are shifting from terrestrial television to other forms of digital content consumption. With pun intended, we've seen this movie before: it's called the newspaper industry. And what's happened to that industry? Obviously, the amount of people reading newspapers is steadily trending downward and national and regional newspaper content consumption is being augmented / replaced with other means.

Every form of "moving image" consumption is undergoing change. Linear consumption of terrestrial television is being augmented by time-shifted, place-shifted, and nonlinear consumption models. Micro-casting (sometimes referred to as "niche-casting") is the phenomenon wherein the economics of content delivery make it possible to reach an audience regardless of how small.

And the ultimate reason that the stakes are high is that content owners must constantly look for opportunities to exploit their content in any and every form possible. Regardless of screen size, resolution, language-regardless of whether it is being consumed on a television set or on a handheld device-regardless of whether it is being watched at 3 AM or as it airs at 9PM-access to content is critical.

Every report and study of broadband consumption and online viewing patterns clearly indicates that broadband use is growing rapidly and online video consumption is dramatically increasing. Regarding broadband penetration, according to Point Topic, China leads all countries, followed by the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Italy, Brazil, and Canada. In the same manner that we have been experiencing a year-over-year decrease in the amount of time people spend reading newspapers, we are seeing a year-over-year increase in the amount of time people are watching content online. And while the broadcasting community continues to state that it has yet to see a dilution of the terrestrial audience in lieu of consuming the same content online, the fact is that-overall-television viewership is decreasing for selected programming types-news certainly being one of those types.

Kinetic Content and the Digital Media Supply Chain

Media at rest, or in repose, has only an intrinsic value. But intrinsic value needs to be unlocked and capitalized upon. Digital content needs to be off the archive shelf and on the actual and virtual storefront so that it can be browsed and consumed. The concept of kinetic content means that the more that content moves the more we are likely to generate interest in the content-interest that ultimately equates to a monetary transaction.

If we had the luxury of stepping back and examining what is occurring in today's quickly evolving digital media content landscape, we would see a vast, endless supply chain of content-everything from user generated content to feature films to niche-casts. We would see the windows for feature films ever shrinking such that some films are available on DVD and for online consumption on the same day that they are in theaters. We would see content being shown on television and available on portals.  We would see sporting events available on virtually every device with a screen. And, interestingly enough, we don't really even have to step back to see of all this-we're in the midst of living it.

But what is most interesting is what we often don't think about. Few of us, in buying milk at the grocery store, stop to consider the supply chain necessary to put the carton of milk in our hand. But, assuredly, there is a supply chain at work there. When we go online to browse, review, and purchase a song on iTunes, for example, do we really consider what has to happen for that song to go from content owner to consumer? In fact, a vast array of processes and systems must come into contact with that single piece of content-the song.

Each of these new business initiatives brings forth requirements for an intricate supply chain that has to be fulfilled. Hundreds, thousands, and millions of digital media files across a wide range of file formats are the ingredients that must undergo a series of steps, among which are: content transformation, packaging, rights management, distribution, transactional billing and reporting. And, at the core, is the incessant need to get content to many places in ever-decreasing amounts of time.

Banks and Federal Express

On the surface, banks and a delivery service such as Federal Express may not seem to have much in common. But, peer a little closer, and there are some common aspects.

• Order scheduling and order fulfillment systems are in place.
• Items are transported from/to/between/among organizations.
• There are centrally managed concepts at work: in real-time there are status indications of what is occurring-whether by GPS monitoring of an armored car or a sophisticated wireless tracking systems for packages.
• Security-or if we would like to entertain some humor-one could say, "bullet proof" security.
• Integration with other applications such as web-based tracking, reporting, and billing systems.
• Process automation is found throughout these two activities: banks have agreed upon rules and policies by which money-both real and virtual-will change hands.
• Transformations occur between and among currencies and hand-off procedures.
• Notifications are electronic and automatic.
• Operational inefficiencies caused by manual tasks are reduced to their absolute minimum and automated whenever possible.

 Why Central Management is a Necessity

A fundamental decision regarding the implementation of a digital content distribution strategy is whether to pursue a centralized model or a federated model. To illustrate the contrasts, let us assume that we have ten locations for sending and receiving content. In a federated model, any point (sender) can send content to any other point (receiver). These transfers are accomplished but that activity must then be aggregated, after the fact (transfer), in order for post-transfer statistics to be collected. If ten locations are simultaneously sending and receiving, that results in five point-to-point transfers. If these transfers are all sharing corporate network resources, by what method can it be ensured that the network is not overrun and taken down by non-essential transfers?

In a federated model, the "everyone is equal" or "every transfer is equal" model applies. Further, what methods exist to enforce corporate governance policies or corporate practices that may be necessary to protect content in transit? In a federated model, some transfers may be done with media encryption added to further protect content. Others may be done without this extra security step. This ad-hoc application or non-application of policies is an undesirable consequence of a federated distribution model.

However, in a centrally managed model, the precise amount of bandwidth for any file transfer can be set and deterministically adjusted on the fly without affecting other transfers. The result of this centralized control is that file transfer priorities can be set and observed. Further, it can be determined that all media transfers should be encrypted at 256-bit level and this rule is then enforced at a system-wide level. As per our earlier example, there simply is no way to accomplish sophisticated cross-business process automation routines in a federated model.

Logistics Planning

There is actually a vast amount of logistics planning that has to occur for money to go from bank to bank and from lender to receiver. Package delivery services-the really sophisticated ones-are coordinating a complex set of variables in order for a package to arrive at its destination within the intended delivery window. The consumer of a package delivery service makes one very specific decision: deciding when a package must arrive at its location and agreeing that a certain price will be paid to ensure that the package will arrive within that time window.

This sets the stage for the service level agreement (SLA) to be put in place and from there the consumer is most likely unaware of the logistics occurring behind the scenes. There is a coordination system determining and tracking when the package is picked up, what route it needs to take, what time it must be on a plane, off a plane, on a truck, and off the truck and into the recipient's hands. Providing some level of feedback to the consumer has, naturally, found its way to the Web, and the consumer has some limited capability to track the whereabouts of a package and a time range for actual delivery. Naturally, the consumer cannot affect the routes that a plane is taking, the roads that a delivery van is taking or the speed of travel.

Automation in the Manufacturing Sector

There is no doubt that introducing automation in the manufacturing sector has enabled the creation of many consumable products that have required no human intervention in the product creation lifecycle. The most obvious example is that building an automobile today is clearly quite different than how they were built one hundred years ago. Packaged foodstuffs are yet another example where there is limited human intervention and every step is calculated to occur along the manufacturing line.

However, heretofore, there has been no real comparable, wide-scale, cross-business automation initiative for the M&E industry. True enough, there are pockets of activities, usually characterized by in-house software development activities with multiple scripts that move digital content through its lifecycle.

The Market Size for Media Consumption

The market size for media consumption-across all media content types-in 2008 was $1.82 trillion and is growing at 6.6% annually (PWC, June 2008). Further, the movement of advertising budgets to new and emerging viewing patterns (e.g. online) is occurring and is yet another trending indication to the legitimacy of online and portable content consumption.

Business Process Automation in the Media and Entertainment Industry

Thus, when combined, we have a large worldwide set of consumers; we have an ever-increasing amount of content; and we have a growing and evolving method of consuming (listening to and watching) that content. Interestingly enough, the need for business process automation for the M&E industry is as necessary and as critical as it is for any other major, worldwide industry. After the initial content creation process is done, fulfilling the digital media supply chain is largely comprised of a series of manufacturing steps-albeit manufacturing steps designed to address digital content specific tasks and routines.

And yet, the M&E industry, and its need for business process automation differs in one very important aspect from manufacturing-related automation systems. Manufacturing systems have always implicitly been created when large numbers of like objects are created for large numbers of consumers. What is unique about the M&E industry is that-true enough-we may need to make content available to millions of potential consumers. But, we may also be creating and packaging content for a much smaller group of consumers. Heretofore, the only way to accomplish this has been to create "one-off" packages and when those cases are encountered, the amount of human intervention typically rises.

File-Based Workflows and Digital Distribution

To address these new and continually changing set of business models, content creators and manufacturers are adopting file-based workflows. Content must be in the proper format, in the proper location, and with the proper components for both file format and metadata so that it can be appropriately consumed, regardless of the listening/viewing device being employed. In practice, the M&E industry is well underway in its transition to digital file-based acquisition, manipulation (editing, etc.), and distribution strategies. An ever-increasing amount of digital files are being generated, packaged and distributed and much of this electronic distribution is occurring using the open Internet.

Because time is a huge factor in being able to generate and distribute files, file transfer protocols and file acceleration methods are being examined and adopted. In order to best address specific needs, it is important to understand how file transfer methods operate and what functionality to be mindful of in researching methods to move files in the implementation of a digital media distribution strategy.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Network Latency

Many organizations employ FTP servers in order to facilitate business-to-business transactions. There are certainly a number of issues with this-among them, the inability to resume from where a file transfer was interrupted as well as the issues relating to scaling the operation to large numbers of users. Low-end firewalls and filtering routers are not designed to implement adequate controls on FTP traffic. With respect to the protocol methodology, in highly latent networks, round trip delays are introduced and transfer times grow.

                                                                      Continue to next page