By Jim Vinh
When you’ve got vision, a good roadmap, and the power of the cloud, it’s easy to follow the path to future success.
That was one of the lessons of digital transformation that came out of the Android TV Summit APAC conference earlier this month. At the Bangkok event our team showcased how customers are using our Quickplay cloud-native platform and Google Cloud to deploy and scale multiple services in the APAC market.
Here’s an example: PLDT and its wireless subsidiary Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) are home to a vast array of broadband, wireless, and media services that have very different objectives: encouraging mobile broadband consumption, providing an in-home entertainment and IOT hub, or offering exclusive pay-TV content. Each service has its own set of business objectives, monetization models, distribution methods and content rights,
Managing this complexity is a Quickplay specialty. Our powerful, flexible platform and the expertise we’ve gained from launching more than 50 services worldwide have been an ideal fit for PLDT and Smart’s ambitious migration program and overall thrust to improve customer experience. Our team worked with them to implement a highly scalable solution that is breaking down operational silos and enabling new services that engage and monetize viewers; together we brought it quickly to market with the lowest possible total cost of ownership.
In a busy year – we’ve launched or signed a dozen services in the past 12 months – the PLDT story is one of the standouts. Using almost two decades of OTT and cloud expertise, we worked with them to migrate their Smart Gigaplay service to the cloud in just four months. Smart GigaPlay enables Smart Prepaid, Smart Postpaid, TNT, and Smart Bro subscribers to watch live and video-on-demand (VOD) sports, music, and entertainment shows for free, as well as provide them access to exclusive pay-per-view content. This includes, among others, great content from the country’s top sports leagues: the Philippine Basketball Association, Premier Volleyball League and the University Athletic Association of the Philippines, the country’s top collegiate league. Even better: the new platform is innovation-friendly and future-proof.
PLDT is an example of how our customers can reduce overall TCO. With all brands running from a single, universally orchestrated platform (AV pipeline, CMS, UMS, DRM, CDN, and clients), customers benefit from economies of scale and faster time to market. New services and features require only incremental changes to our existing technology stack; these can be completed in as little as a few weeks and at lower cost. This is a real improvement over monolithic platforms that require customized development and bespoke integration that can take months and millions to complete.
While we’ve gotten high marks from customers for our expertise, our technology innovation, and our collaborative approach,,we’d like to think there are other attributes that are making us attractive to companies such as PLDT and Smart. A few thoughts:
- Digital transformation is our business – Helping customers escape the limitations of legacy technologies and migrate their services to the digital future is core to what we do, not a sideline.
- Scaling for success – We expedite our customers’ ability to expand properties, products and geos quickly and easily, and to scale up for high concurrency live sporting events via Google Cloud autoscaling.
- APAC-focused – In the past year alone, we’ve supported the migration or launch strategies for multiple services in the market, including the Philippines’ leading integrated telco network, PLDT, and its wireless arm, Smart, India’s aha and others. We’ve systematized our deployment and migration processes at an industrial scale and built an in-region team of 200+ for software development, media operations, customer success, and 24×7 operational support.
- Multi-cloud support– Our versatile architecture can deliver peak performance on both private and public clouds. We also support deployment in hybrid environments of public and private clouds, helping to manage complex workflows so that customers can maximize existing investments in legacy on-prem components. BTW it’s worth noting that our public cloud bona fides include receipt of the Google Cloud Industry Solution Partner of the Year Award for Media & Entertainment.
Everybody’s digital transformation journey is different but our successes with PLDT and Smart, India’s aha, and others in the APAC market speak for themselves. Working with a diverse group of customers, and leveraging Google Cloud, we’ve helped multiple telcos and media companies turn their visions into the roadmaps that are leading to success. We can’t wait to see who’s next!