IPTV news – “Our Tier-1 customers have a big pipeline of apps on the way”

IBC 2009: Having secured customer wins with many of the world’s larger IPTV operators for its Mediaroom software platform, Microsoft is now focusing on consolidation – by enabling its existing operator clients to offer their end-customers new applications and services, as well as cut down costs, and bring Tier-2 and Tier-3 operators into the Mediaroom fold.

Ted Malone, Senior Director of Product Management for the TV, Video and Music Platforms business at Microsoft, acknowledges that operators such as Deutsche Telekom, AT&T and Swisscom are now looking at ways to differentiate their service and offer something compelling out of the marriage between broadcast and broadband services: “Our Tier-1 telco customers have a big pipeline of applications on the way,” he said. “There is now developer momentum behind the Presentation Framework for Mediaroom, and many of these applications can be introduced in a very short space of time,” he said, quoting the multiview service offered by AT&T in the US, as well as an MSN Video application that was developed by a summer student at Microsoft over a few weeks.

The introduction of virtualisation support for the Mediaroom platform (coming out of the Windows Server 2008 team) has also helped Microsoft to address both the smaller Tier-2 and Tier-3 customers that were previously looking at smaller-scale solutions, and the larger Tier-1s such as AT&T that wish to drive down the number of servers to be maintained. It also makes it considerably easier to deploy lab systems to current and potential customers, according to Mr. Malone.

via IPTV news – “Our Tier-1 customers have a big pipeline of apps on the way”.