Expert-Built or BIY: Choosing your OTT Strategy
Selecting Between an In-House OTT Backend or an Expert-Built One
The OTT universe has exploded over the last few years, reaching $135 billion in global revenues in 2021, with an increase of $21 billion on the cards for 2022. The dynamic nature of OTT makes this industry, unlike traditional broadcast. Any OTT platform with the right value proposition and a backend designed for extensibility can indeed achieve success.
Establishing an OTT infrastructure can be challenging; the multi-staged process needs to be designed with the utmost consideration for workflows and maximum automation. From ingestion and management to security and distribution, each step needs careful consideration. Companies not only want to give the best QoS and QoE to the viewers, but they also want streamlined workflows for stakeholders behind the scenes.
A common dilemma that pops up in the OTT design phase is whether to build an OTT platform from scratch in-house or leverage an expert partner.
Build or Buy?
Both strategies have their issues and benefits. Building an in-house platform from scratch might give in-house teams more control. Yet, getting stuck in the process due to high costs, long development cycles, or even ending up with a monolithic non-scalable platform isn’t uncommon. Unless a company has spare resources and plenty of experience in the OTT industry, seeking expert-built customizable solutions as a base seems more objective.
What if you had the freedom to enjoy the best of both worlds? Where you leverage an array of managed and open-source services with the capability to develop your bespoke services, all within a shared technology stack. Axinom offers you this freedom through Axinom Mosaic, a unique platform that standardizes all significant steps in the digital content supply chain through independent yet connected services. Mosaic decouples each major workflow into services that fit together through frontend and backend libraries and with external services through supplied APIs.
Let’s have a look at the different processes, functions, and expectations from a platform and what Axinom Mosaic offers:
| Process | Function | Solution Consideration | Axinom Mosaic Solution |
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Content |
Media assets are ingested into a processing system. |
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Content |
Premium content is processed, prepared, and protected. |
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Content |
Media assets are managed and assigned relations, including monetization. |
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Content |
Provisioning of access to media assets to frontend clients. |
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Integration |
Integration of own or third-party services. |
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Bespoke |
Build your own services or integrate existing services. |
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Benefits of Leveraging an Experienced Vendor
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Expertise and modularity
In-house creation can yield good results only if there is a vision that is backed by domain expertise. In-house development endeavors require vast experience in carrying out such software development projects of scale.Companies building their own OTT platform usually find themselves with a tightly-coupled monolithic architecture, which is highly dependent on other components and is non-scalable. On the contrary, an industry expert understands the need for a modular architecture that allows for high scalability and easy maintenance as faulty services can be easily isolated, debugged, and deployed in a fraction of time.
Furthermore, a collaborative strategy enables easy transfer of technical skills and an easy in-house takeover by the time the platform matures.
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Faster time to market
Contrary to the long development cycles of an in-house OTT platform, an expert built platform can be launched in a fraction of time. Subject to the level of complexity, customization, and integrations involved.Platforms built leveraging a modern approach allows for intelligent and automated workflows for ingestion, management, security, and distribution. It is also paired with an orchestration of content and workflows based on predefined conditions for business models, formats, geography, devices, and more. This reduces the time-to-market for the platform and the content immensely.
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Pre-integrations
A crucial factor for an OTT back-end is the integrations, with own or third-party systems, and the availability of standard APIs for future integrations. Usually, systems built in-house are limited in their integration capabilities, leading to inefficient workarounds.Partners with extensive experience in the industry are well aware and proficient in carrying out the needed integrations with their own or third-party systems.
A Collaborative Strategy
A collaborative strategy for building OTT platforms solves most of the challenges faced by companies. It combines the platform’s ambitions and requirements with a proven technology stack from an experienced vendor. The stack, oriented for future growth, allows for customizations and in-house operation and development take-over.
Axinom, a provider of best-of-breed solutions for OTT content processing, management, and protection, is well-versed in building OTT backends. The Axinom Mosaic platform gives you complete freedom to mix and match services as needed. Making it as simple as selecting what you need, building as you expand, and paying as you scale.
With a future-proof OTT backend built on Axinom Mosaic, providers can manage digital assets, associated metadata, integrations, and much more. The system has the potential to be extended in-house to grow with the growing business and operational requirements. Axinom provides ample aids such as developer training, support, and documentation to help such a scenario.
