Signiant Wins IBC Innovation Award for its Work with NBC Universal

BURLINGTON, MA (September 24, 2008) – Signiant, the leading developer of digital media distribution management solutions for the telco, media and entertainment industries, today announced it has received an IBC2008 Innovation Award for the company’s contribution to NBC Universal’s MICAH multi-format, digital media production workflow. This prestigious award in the content management category is shared between NBC Universal, Signiant and a fellow technology supplier.

Each year, the IBC Innovation Awards celebrate the partnership between technology companies and users, with winners having demonstrated complete, innovative and cost-effective solutions to technical, commercial or creative challenges. Of the three categories – content creation, content management and content delivery – NBCU’s MICAH project won the content management category, while Disney’s Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds concert film won the content creation award for stereo 3D post production and Live Earth won for instant VOD delivery of its concerts. Jeff Katzenberg won IBC’s International Honour for Excellence. The winners were announced in a ceremony September 14 during the IBC Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam.

This award is the second significant industry recognition Signiant has received this year, and follows a number of high-profile customer wins. In April, Signiant’s Digital Media Distribution Management Suite (DMDMS) was named a “Pick Hit” for product innovation by Broadcast Engineering at NAB 2008. Throughout 2008, Signiant has added Scandinavian Broadcast Services (SBS), Mediaset, Deluxe Digital Studios, the NHL, Hulu, Five, the BBC and the NFL Network to its already impressive list of telco, media and entertainment customers using DMDMS to manage, accelerate, automate and secure the movement of their digital files.

The MICAH Project
As NBC Universal worked aggressively to expand the reach of its broad portfolio of media properties and content assets across multiple platforms – including the Web, VOD, and electronic sell-through (EST) – it needed an efficient digital media workflow to transform its tape and file-based content into the diverse distribution formats required to support these new opportunities.

NBCU developed its MICAH production workflow, combining NBC Universal’s proprietary in-house development with third party transcoding, ingest and encoding systems and Signiant’s DMDMS, which provides transport and delivery of file-based media to both internal and external content partners. The result is a fully automated workflow for transforming and distributing media for multiple content partners and platforms. Spanning NBCU’s geographically dispersed operations across the U.S. and worldwide, MICAH maximizes quality and throughput for the timely availability of media assets in multiple formats, while providing the high level of automation essential for handling the substantial volume of content – typically thousands of clips – being processed daily.

“NBC Universal has a rich history of technical innovation in media, and to have this project recognized amongst our international peers is a fantastic tribute,” said Rab Mukraj, director of digital media delivery at NBC Universal. “The Micah project is an outstanding example of how the close partnership between users and vendors can turn powerful technology into real-world benefits, and we could not have accomplished this without the exceptional efforts of Digital Rapids and Signiant”.

“We’re very proud to be recognized by the IBC Awards Committee for our work with NBC Universal on the MICAH project, said Dennis Albano, chairman and CEO, Signiant, Inc. “NBC Universal’s cutting-edge approach to digital media distribution management is setting the leadership standard for media and entertainment companies around the world. The recognition of Signiant’s performance on this project supports our view that when it comes to choosing a partner for digital media distribution management, Signiant’s technology and team of experienced professionals is second to none.”