Satellite service provider SES expands collaboration with Microsoft Azure

SES announced it is developing a broadcast-grade managed cloud service offering on Microsoft Azure as a result of an expanded collaboration with Microsoft. Benefitting from Azure’s extensive cloud and AI capabilities, and its own expertise in providing managed services for leading broadcasters and media companies worldwide, SES is transforming media service delivery via the cloud.

This service will provide end-to-end, service-level agreement (SLA)-based media delivery services on Azure, giving broadcasters and media companies the flexibility and scalability that are essential in today’s rapidly changing media environment. Bringing the most relevant content to the cloud and providing innovative services covering the entire video value chain – ingest, playout, and delivery – will enable media companies to scale and address the consumer’s growing demand for a premium viewing experience on every screen.

SES leads the industry with its worldwide reach of over 355 million TV households (or 1 billion people) and distributes over 8,200 channels via satellite. With SES’s recent unification of its wholly owned video services subsidiary, MX1, with its SES Video business unit, SES now manages over 525 channels and delivers more than 8,400 hours of online video streaming, including over 620 hours of premium sports and live events per day. Going to market with a unified solution for video infrastructure and services means that SES will accelerate the rollout of hybrid linear and non-linear content delivery services and solutions with unprecedented global reach.

At IBC2019, SES will demonstrate two initial use cases for its new service with Azure. Visitors to the SES stand (1.B51) will be able to witness first-hand:

• Fully managed playout services on Azure, including master playout and localised playout including ad detection and replacement
• The advantages of efficient, high-quality multichannel live IP encoding managed 24/7 by SES on Azure

“Our collaboration with Microsoft Azure will enable us to take our portfolio of media services and distribution solutions to the next level,” said Ferdinand Kayser, CEO of SES Video. “Our cloud-enabled media service will be unique to the industry and will offer scalability and flexibility, along with increased broadcast quality of service, thanks to the latest AI and machine learning capabilities.”

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Tad Brockway, Corporate Vice President, Azure Storage, Media, & Edge, Microsoft Corp. “Broadcasters and media companies need solutions to deliver high-quality video services globally with maximum flexibility, scalability, and reliability. We look forward to working with SES to deliver these new solutions on Azure.”

SES also announced an expanded relationship with Microsoft that enables connectivity between SES’s multi-orbit satellite systems and Azure ExpressRoute. This initiative builds on the companies’ broader strategic collaboration and their shared common vision to reach everyone with intelligent cloud, media and network solutions.