Grass Valley announces completion of business transformation with shift to growth mode and appointment of three executives to leadership team
Grass Valley has completed its three-year business transformation and has transitioned to growth mode.
The company has seen a simplification of its organisation focusing on improved client service, along with dramatic and continued investments in its integrated hardware solutions.
“I’m very proud of the incredible transformation that the Grass Valley family has navigated,” said Grass Valley chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr. “We set out a bold ambition to reimagine the future workflow for media and to accomplish this we’d have to work closely with our clients, who themselves are transforming to win in the next phase. We’ve simplified our organisational structure, with leadership changes and key new hires, optimised our global facilities, and focused our product portfolio to align with the changing media landscape. With the supply chain issues subsiding, we are seeing a considerable reduction in our backlog. I’m excited for our team and our industry that we are in a position to surge when our clients need us most.”
Since the launch of the cloud-native AMPP ecosystem, Grass Valley has finessed its hardware portfolio, with new innovations closely tied to the ecosystem set to be unveiled soon. Together with key hardware integrations, the company has developed close to 100 native applications and certified nearly 80 Alliance partners within AMPP’s open and integrated ecosystem. The platform provides clients with an open multi-vendor platform for live, production and playout workflows as cloud-native solutions. Additionally, Grass Valley has enhanced the AMPP deployment models to encompass on-premises, cloud-hosted, or hybrid configurations – all while retaining the advantages of a cloud-native architecture. These innovations have resulted in eight significant patents issued in the first half of 2023 alone.
Throughout 2023, major Grass Valley customers are continuing to benefit from the agility and cost-efficiency advantages of hybrid (ground/cloud) architectures offered by AMPP. Among the most recent, fully deployed clients using Grass Valley’s approach to the future of media include CBS Sports Golazo Network, Sky, Telstra Broadcast Services and Canal+.
Grass Valley says it has experienced a strong surge in performance over the past year with the culmination of the business transformation and the rapid market acceleration of AMPP, resulting in dramatically improved performance. The company has more than doubled its earnings in the last year alone, allowing it to look forward with accelerated investments across the portfolio. Notably, AMPP has exhibited over 200% year-over-year growth since 2020, having already achieved over 100% of its 2022 targets to date. Average application usage in AMPP now exceeds 3 million hours per month globally.
“With AMPP, we’ve ushered in a new era of cloud-native, open and integrated solutions for media production, giving our clients the freedom to craft their workflows as they envision, whether it’s on-premises, in the cloud, or a seamless blend of both,” said Grass Valley CPO Adam Marshall. “Combine this with Grass Valley’s industry-leading innovations in cameras, routing, processing and switchers, it underscores our steadfast commitment to propelling advancements in media technology.”
In tandem with its expansion initiatives, Grass Valley has appointed three key executives to its leadership team, closing the final phase of its three-year transformation plan.
Jon Wilson has been named chief operating office, effective October 1. Wilson, former president and COO at Telestream, previously served as CFO for just under three years. He brings leadership skills and a proven track record of driving strategy and results, team development and continuous improvement throughout organisations.
With immediate effect, Ian Fletcher has been appointed chief technology officer, following his tenure as senior vice president VP of enterprise product strategy. Prior to this, he held the position of chief application designer within the Advanced Technology Group, playing a pivotal role in the inception and continuous enhancement and development of AMPP.
Adam Marshall is appointed as chief product officer effective immediately, following his previous role as VP of marketing for Grass Valley. Marshall has quickly risen through the ranks of Grass Valley, previously holding the position of pre-sales director and prior to that, senior global pre-sales manager for AMPP & Playout. In his new role, Marshall will continue to have overall marketing responsibility for Grass Valley.
Furthermore, Grass Valley is on track to meet its goal, set in 2021, of hiring over 400 new, highly talented employees by the end of 2023. These positions are distributed across key global centres of excellence in Krakow, Poland; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Montreal, Canada, the company’s operations centre of excellence.