MediaKind partners with Arqiva for headend-as-a-service

MediaKind wants to streamline the workflows needed to deliver content to viewers by simplifying the headend operations of broadcasters and OTT operators.

As part of the company’s ‘live without limits’ initiative, MediaKind has launched the next stage of its partnership with Arqiva in the form of Arqplex, a new hybrid content processing service.

MediaKind head of portfolio marketing Murray Barker said: “We are looking at the current limitations of delivering and experiencing live content, and then how to break that down with regards to latency, monetisation and quality of experience. Sports content is of course a key driver in those areas and so for MediaKind, our focus is on addressing those challenges for our customers.”

MediaKind’s tie-up with Arqiva has resulted in a fully managed headend-as-a-service, which has been designed and developed for broadcasters, network or platform operators as well as cable and satellite network operators.

Based on a cloud-based subscription model, it removes the need for large capital investments and allows for swifter technology upgrades.

Media service providers can use AWS public cloud, an alternative cloud provider or Arqiva’s datacentres.

Barker said: “Initially we were a vendor customer of Arqiva, and then there was a lightbulb moment; we at MediaKind provide an incredible tech stack, and they [Arqiva] do managed services well, so lets pull that together and provide something of more value for all our customers. We have also developed a joint go-to-market proposition as well.”

Using MediaKind’s cloud-native headend software, Arqplex provides secure and reliable content aggregation, encoding, multiplexing and packaging for content distribution and will unify OTT and broadcast operations, reducing complexity, increasing efficiency and delivering rapid speed to market for customers, MediaKind said.

Barker added that two organisations had already signed up to Arqplex, with details of those customers to be shared in the coming weeks.