The DPP reveals the greatest risks to a full IP future

The DPP, the media industry’s business network, today released an important new report which looks at the challenges posed by the transition to full IP distribution of content to consumers. Home Truths: Preparing for an IP future is the latest output from the DPP’s influential DPP At Home event series, which bring together experts from across the industry to gain insight into major issues. The event and report were enabled by DPP member company Akamai.

“The transition to IP may be the single most discussed topic in the media industry over the last few years,” says DPP Managing Director, and author of the report, Mark Harrison. “And yet somehow we haven’t managed as an industry to identify exactly what we need to ensure delivery of that IP future goes smoothly. This report is the first step in gaining that understanding.”

The report outlines 16 business, technology and user experience challenges that the group of experts believe could constrain the delivery of IP-based content distribution. It then undertakes a risk analysis to determine which of those challenges require the most urgent intervention.

Four challenges stood out as posing the highest level of risk:

• Infrastructure investment: infrastructure investment requirements sit with intermediary parties, rather than with content providers or consumers.
• Cyber security and cyber terrorism: a world in which all content is delivered over IP is also one that is constantly vulnerable to cybercrime and cyber terrorism.
• Peak load scaling: large, intermittent and unpredictable peaks in load on the internet – both from major live programming events and from other internet users – are hugely challenging to both infrastructure and business models.
• Monetisation of content: changes in distribution models are threatening established funding models for content.

The group of experts looked at the remedies required to meet such challenges. All the remedies had a common theme: industry collaboration.

“Quite possibly, we are in the midst of one of the biggest changes we’ve ever experienced in media,” says Akamai’s Director of Product Marketing, Ian Munford. “As audiences increasingly shift their viewing preferences from linear channels towards media being delivered over the internet, broadcasters and service providers are presented with huge opportunities – but, in order to achieve them, they are also faced with a range of fundamental challenges as operations start to transition towards an all IP future. As an industry, we all need to understand those challenges fully in order to ensure, both technically and commercially, that we have a vibrant and sustainable future for the entire ecosystem. The DPP initiative gives us further insight to support our customers as we go on this transformational journey together.”

This latest report from the DPP is part of a programme of work that explores the opportunities offered by an full IP future – including the move to cloud based supply chains, a special DPP Debates event for DPP members on the content monetisation challenge, and some newly commissioned research on IP based production that will deliver this Autumn.