At IBC Avid presented details of its Avid Everywhere vision for the industry, which is about enabling creative professionals and media organisations to connect with their audiences in a more powerful, efficient, collaborative, and profitable way. The following Q&A with Avid president and CEO Louis Hernandez, Jr. provides insight into the Avid Everywhere white paper and details the products the company showcased at IBC.
WHAT IS AVID’S STRATEGIC VISION?
LHJ: With the consumerisation and digitisation of content, media professionals are facing unprecedented challenges, and the industry needs a leader to step forward and provide the direction we are offering with the Avid Everywhere vision. This vision will manifest itself as the most fluid end-to-end distributed media production environment in the industry, a comprehensive ecosystem that encompasses every aspect of the new digital media value chain.
We invite the South African film and television industry to download and read this white paper (avid.com/everywhere) to learn more about Avid Everywhere.
Avid also made another important strategic announcement at IBC. To broaden collaboration across our community of customers and industry partners, we announced the creation of the Avid Customer Association, a comprehensive initiative designed to provide essential strategic leadership to the media industry, collaborate with key industry leaders and visionaries, and deepen relationships between Avid and our customers. With the Avid Everywhere vision and the launch of the Avid Customer Association, we are committed to spearheading the media industry’s fight to overcome the extraordinary challenges we all face.
PLEASE ELABORATE ON THE NEW CUSTOMER ASSOCIATION INITIATIVE.
LHJ: Avid enjoys the privilege of counting the industry’s largest and most inspirational media organisations, thought leaders, innovators and storytellers as our customers. With the industry changing so rapidly, it is more critical than ever to work collaboratively with the industry in a more intimate and powerful way. The Avid Customer Association will be run by and for our customers, and will engage our entire community to provide both strategic leadership and influence our future development of cutting edge technology solutions. We have already had an overwhelming response, and founding members of the association’s executive board represent major media organisations from the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
The Association will hold its inaugural event on 4 and 5 April 2014 just prior to NAB in Las Vegas, allowing our members to interact face-to-face with thought leaders and Avid personnel on a wide range of industry topics. We’re also organising additional single-focus Avid Customer Association user groups to work on specific topics.
WHY DOES AVID PARTICIPATE AT IBC?
LHJ: IBC brings together broadcast and media leaders and influencers not only from Europe, but from around the world. It is an essential forum for Avid to update the worldwide community about who we are and where we’re going strategically – in addition to unveiling our latest product innovations, such as we did this year with Avid Everywhere, the Customer Association, and our new product announcements. We launched the all-new S6 control surface and ISIS 5500 shared storage system at IBC this year, and were very pleased with the enthusiasm our announcements generated. In addition, we take advantage of the opportunity IBC gives us to stay in touch with our industry peers.
WHAT PRODUCTS DID YOU EXHIBIT AT IBC THIS YEAR?
LHJ: In addition to showcasing our existing broad range of enterprise, video and audio solutions, we had, on the floor, the shipping versions of all the new products we announced earlier this year at NAB, including Media Composer 7, Pro Tools 11, and Interplay Production 3.0. At IBC we were excited to explain how all of our existing products fit into the Avid Everywhere vision. Our most loyal clients will benefit first to unleash the benefits of the most powerful platform in the industry.
Of course, the innovation didn’t stop there. We also underscored our ongoing product innovation by introducing an all-new, state-of-the-art mixing control surface, the Avid S6, as well as the next generation of its shared storage systems, the ISIS® 5500.
Avid S6 builds on the same proven technology that is core to the industry-leading ICON and System 5 product families, and is a major new addition to its industry leading family of control surfaces for sound recording, mixing and editing. Avid S6 is designed for audio professionals in the most demanding production environments, delivering the performance needed to complete projects faster while producing the best sounding mixes. In addition, S6 provides mixing professionals with a state-of-the-art solution that easily scales to meet their current and future challenges.
Avid ISIS 5500 is Avid’s next-generation online shared storage system, offering unprecedented value for small- to mid-sized post-production, broadcast, education, and corporate facilities. It provides critical new capabilities to help small-and mid-sized media organisations more easily and efficiently deliver higher quality, inspiring content – by streamlining and accelerating editorial workflows.
