Industry body AIMS for open-standard IP
Published: WORLD
WORLD: A group of broadcast and media companies has aligned to form the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), with a mandate to bring IP solutions to market that offer ‘complete compatibility, are based on open standards, and integrate into media workflow environments’ to foster industry efficiency. With founding members of the alliance including Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo, Snell Advanced Media and Nevion, the group’s efforts will reportedly focus on promoting the adoption, standardisation, development and refinement of open protocols for media over IP, with an initial emphasis on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 2022-6 and AES67.
‘The mission of the Alliance for IP Media Solutions is to endorse open standards and protect the choice that broadcasters and media companies must have when selecting the right solution for their particular needs,’ commented Steve Reynolds, CTO at Imagine Communications.
Mike Cronk, senior vice president of strategic marketing, Grass Valley, added that ‘our intent is to avoid perpetuating a future where suppliers push their proprietary technologies only to lock media companies into technologies that don’t work well with other systems or are not easily scaled and upgraded.’
‘AIMS’s support of open standards and technical recommendations such as TR-03, TR-04 and AES67 afford us an opportunity to eliminate the fragmentation of implementations that our industry has endured over the last 20 years – our chance to avoid repeating expensive and time-consuming mistakes of the past,’ continued Lawo director of marketing and communication, Andreas Hilmer.
‘In this transition to IP, we need one set of standards that become as ubiquitous as SDI,’ offered Snell Advanced Media (SAM) CEO, Tim Thorsteinson. ‘SAM is throwing its weight behind AIMS because it supports the only set of standards for IP that have been collaboratively developed and that meet the needs of future business models.’
The 74-member Video Services Forum (VSF) is already working on open standards for the transition to IP with the support of the SMPTE and the EBU. AIMS will support the work carried out by VSF and will continue to lend support in the development of a standard approach to IP by providing ‘specific guidance in its bylaws to its members and to the media industry via the AIMS Roadmap’.
‘The rate of change in broadcast and media is unprecedented, so it is critical that the industry rapidly aligns with open standards to the benefit of all – from suppliers to end users,’ concluded Brad Gilmer, executive director of VSF. ‘The approach that AIMS is endorsing is already enjoying broad industry support and is well suited to the industry’s future.’
Membership in AIMS is reportedly available to all individuals and companies that ‘support open standards and share a commitment to the group’s founding principles’.