IPTV middleware: ready for prime time, anytime

What caught my attention amongst the flow of sessions were a number of comments that raised doubts over the state of current IPTV middleware and its apparent immaturity in delivering on the technology’s superiority vis-a-vis legacy platforms.

Concerns ranged from IPTV middleware vendors replicating old style pay TV instead of innovating the medium to bring out its true potential, to not being able to handle upgrades in a timely and, most importantly, cost effective manner.

While I agree with some of these to a point, I think it would be wrong to dismiss IPTV middleware wholesale as not ‘ready for prime time’, as one presenter complained. Instead, I believe the issue is the fact that IPTV middleware is still a lot more complex than some operators would like to think.

IPTV middleware has come a long way

Middleware technology, just like the rest of the IPTV technology value chain, has come a long way in a very short time span, but the fact is that it is still at a level of immaturity that makes finding the right solution for individual services more challenging. The fact is that there are solutions for services big or small out there but operators need to realise that the next best off-the-shelf generic middleware solution is most probably not the right solution to safe guard their service against future innovations and related upgrade costs.

Microsoft may currently be the biggest fish in the IPTV middleware pond, but this doesn’t mean operators have no choice – as they say, where there is big fish, there is smaller fish. Particularly for small to medium sized operators it is worthwhile to look towards non-proprietary providers that have the inherent flexibility to tailor solutions specific to their needs and will deliver the edge over their competitors. After all, let’s not forget that each and every market is different and what works in one market may not be suitable for another.

Here an experienced systems integrator with a vendor agnostic philosophy can provide a tailored solution that will future proof a service at a vastly lower cost than many off-the-shelf solutions.

Mediation layers: short term plugs for a larger problem

One of the most daunting issues for operators making a decision on their middleware solution is the question of minimising exposure to costly updates in the future.

Some companies offer a mediation layer as a solution for cost effectively upgrading middleware as new applications, software versions and features appear. But a mediation layer that proposes to minimise the cost, time and depth of changing middleware is equivalent to pumping water out of a boat rather than fixing the leak: it is a temporary solution at best that does not address the real issues operators face with future-proofing their IPTV middleware.

As mentioned above, IPTV middleware is ever evolving and has not reached a point of maturity that could function as universal standard or reference point to benchmark deployments against. Wrapping a mediation layer around what is essentially an immature middleware system with crudely integrated hardware and software components only contains the problem for the time being – it does not offer an innovative or long term solution. It’s a little bit like dust being swept under the carpet – the dust is still there but you can’t see it for the moment.

How to choose the right middleware solution

To avoid being bogged down by ongoing and costly updates and maintenance to their middleware, but at the same time maximise the benefits of IPTV’s technology advantages, here are some simple checks an operators should consider testing their middleware vendors and solutions providers against:

• - Ensure middleware includes all major backend modules such as content management, security management, and basic subscriber management
• - Middleware should be integrated with decision tree based, service agnostic pricing and rating modules, which allow flexible and high performance real time rating and billing. This will ensure the platform is future proof for virtually any IP based service that may emerge and enables operators to dramatically shorten the product development cycle and time to market for new service plans
• - The middleware front end (GUI) client technologies for IPSTB should be closer to the web browser technologies available today, which would allow sustainable and cost effective IPTV applications development.The back end should be based on a common web application development platform, e.g. PHP, JAVA, or .NET, which allows rapid customer database centric application development and seamless third parties B/OSS platform integration
• - The middleware should be modular enough to allow ongoing IPTV applications development by the service providers, which would help to decouple hefty maintenance and unnecessary royalties charge that service providers facing today
• - Finally, it should be able to be scaled from a full carrier grade IPTV solution, to Internet TV and other IP solutions to provide full cross platform capability