Tedial InBroadcast Feature – October 2022

MAM – Microservices and More

By Julian Fernandez-Campon, CTO Tedial Microservices are the enabler for a true cloud native deployment but in the M&E market, applications are complex, especially in relation to Media Asset Management, Workflow Orchestration and in general all the elements needed to build a content supply chain. With these kind of solutions, we can identify different applications, which play a different role, and are used by different groups of users:

• Administration tools – IAM (Identity and Access Management), platform configuration, etc.
• Operational Tools – Business process operation to complete all the tasks required for the content supply chain: Editing, QC, Validation, Distribution and all the workflow monitoring.
• Library access – For accessing the digital content for searching, browsing and triggering any of the operational workflows.
• Business Intelligence – To have all the metrics in dashboards to see how the platform is performing from different angles and take the correct decisions to optimize the operation.

In traditional MAMs, and even in many other cloud native solutions, the front end is only one application, with different sections accessing to the different microservices. This is also the way this is done in mobile applications and others where there is  less functionality, but for the M&E market a new concept of micro-application is needed, that takes advantage of the Single Sign On (SSO). This gives the user the impression that it’s working in the same application, but in reality, it’s a collection of specific applications that are navigated seamlessly.   This approach conforms a platform where all the components are independent and self-contained with these key advantages:

• Independency and simplicity – Each application performs a specific task, and can be evolved at its own pace, also changes in one component will not affect the other applications.
• Low risk upgrades – Controlling the user groups and number of people that will be affected, minimizing the risks.
• Security – Independent applications can be secured and protected more efficiently, some of them can be deployed in an internal, highly secure network, whereas others that need external access can be deployed in a demilitarized zone (DMZ).

  To conclude, cloud native is not the only architecture required in microservices, for the M&E industry we need to go one step further and that is the concept of micro-applications to attend to different user needs.   *This article was first published in the October 2022 issue of InBroadcast. In the same issue, Tedial is included in the second part of InBroadcast’s media asset management in broadcasting article – MAM Moves on Through AI – looking at how AI is offering more functionality for tracking and logging material in today’s content driven industry.