Sustainability, value sensitivity and partnerships are three topics occupying the mind of Bitmovin’s Chief Architect, Igor Oreper, as the industry grapples with the high environmental impact of video streaming as well as economic pressures.
The topics are also interlinked, he says, as reducing the power consumption of products and services has a positive impact on costs. Partnerships are also being formed to enable different parts of the ecosystem to benefit from each other’s technology investments.
“In fact, my role has changed in the last year specifically to focus on strategic partnerships and strategic growth,” Oreper remarked.
Bitmovin is engaging heavily in sustainability research in collaboration with the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, working on a climate-friendly adaptive video streaming platform called GAIA.
“Video streaming accounts for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in the digital world … and 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions,” Oreper said. “It’s something that we can control and impact as an industry. The big thing right now is measurement. How do we measure it? What is the common unit of measure?”
In terms of value sensitivity, Oreper said a big message at IBC is “really making your dollars count when you’re spending money on all these tools”.
“What we see is there’s less discretionary spending,” he added. “The economic environment has changed in the last year. There’s worry about recession, there’s inflation, and that’s worldwide. In this industry, there’s a little bit of contraction and consolidation as a result.”
For Bitmovin, these interleaving challenges mean that “this is our time to shine”, observed Oreper. “We’ve always pitched efficiency, delivering the same or better video quality with fewer bits. And that message has resonated. But it’s not resonated as strong as it is now,” he added.
Stand Number: 5.D72
Company: Bitmovin
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