Looking forward: what 2025 holds for the wider M&E business environment

Concluding our series on industry predictions for the new year, leading figures from across M&E provide insights on business aspects, including a focus on sustainability and a specific look at the audio world

By Matthew Corrigan

Published: January 8, 2025 Updated: January 9, 2025

Concluding our series on industry predictions for the new year, leading figures from across M&E provide insights on business aspects, including a focus on sustainability and a specific look at the audio world

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Jan Eveleens, CEO Product Division, Riedel Communications Above all the buzzwords, I feel that there is a broader trend of customers being more open to new concepts and having the courage to commit to many of the new technologies that have proven their merit in the past years. Whether remote, cloud, on-prem, whether IP, SDI, or hybrid - our customers know there are many ways for them to reach their business goals, all with specific benefits and challenges. As they explore innovative paths to enhance their operations, we're witnessing a strong drive toward solutions that simplify workflows, empower creativity, and maintain high standards of quality, all while doing more with less.

That's why we're also seeing an increased demand for virtualised and COTS-based solutions, which enable customers to be more efficient both on a workflow level, but also on investment level. They offer immense merits in terms of user experience and usability, and a very efficient use of our customers' infrastructures. This also ties in with the fact that CapEx investments obviously are no longer the only way to acquire new technology. Many customers are looking for ways to optimise, spread risks and be more agile - and subscription models may offer all that.

Our customers know that innovation must not be a goal in itself but a means to drive their business forward. That's why manufacturers mustn't be focused solely on new technology trends, but also on refining and streamlining the trending innovations of recent years and making them more efficient and easier to use. In order to do this, manufacturers need to move even closer to their customers and listen closely to their needs and feedback from the field. This can be a win-win scenario: as the technical possibilities (and complexities) keep on growing, customers are looking for reliable partners to guide them through the high-tech maze that is the media- and entertainment industry. Close customer relationships seem to be more important than ever before.

This year, the importance of key topics like IP, remote, and cloud solutions will undoubtedly continue to grow. But in the end, these are just a means to an end, and just one part of the story of helping our customers create amazing productions efficiently. The other part are the people who use our technologies, who need them to be easy to use and to set up. Even though the complexity behind today's technologies is steadily increasing, it's the manufacturers' job to keep breaking down these complexities to enable the users. In 2025, I believe workflow optimisation and user experience will be among the top priorities for manufacturers. Regardless of the transport or deployment model, solutions must be intuitive and accessible, ensuring that users can focus on creativity and productivity rather than grappling with technical barriers.

I'm sure that these developments will continue, accelerate even. As technologies get more mature, bandwidth, processing power of general-purpose platforms and cloud further improve, they will enable new applications and workflows that were not possible before. Also, the possibilities of incorporating AI into solutions feel endless and are sure to unlock future opportunities we can scarcely imagine today.

Simon Hawkings, director of sales strategy & business acceleration, Ross Video Two significant trends in 2024 were AI and cloud platforms for live production. Everyone's talking about AI, but while there was considerable hype around potential efficiencies and cost savings, most companies have found it's brought up many challenges around legitimacy, trust, and synthetic content. Instead, media companies are using AI to drive efficiencies in backend areas like media asset management, and post-production, where we have seen some exciting developments. On the cloud side, we're seeing platforms that let you build virtualised software stacks for live production, post, and content delivery. But latency, bandwidth, and the debate over CapEx and OpEx models are limiting adoption. It's a fascinating time of transition.

Many media companies and broadcasters are trying to find ways to be more flexible and efficient so they can scale and experiment with new content quickly without investing in physical infrastructure but the transition is still uneven for a number of reasons.

Cloud will keep growing, but the move from CapEx to OpEx will continue to be a challenge. There's a growing dichotomy: Some technology providers are really pushing OpEx models, and not everyone is ready for that. Many media companies are tightening OpEx budgets and trying to figure out how to adopt cloud and software without abandoning their existing systems, so hybrid models might be the way forward for now. Traditionally, the industry has relied on a five-to-seven-year CapEx cycle, where you buy once and use it for years. Many broadcasters aren'

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