Benefits of the Cisco, EnVivo Streaming Platform to the Nigerian Entertainment Industry

Creativity pervades the veins of the entertainment industry, recent digital innovations across its various platforms are becoming more and more advanced. From virtual reality headsets in movie theaters, to drone-filmed music videos to live video streaming on mobile devices, you never know what realm you might end up thanks to technology's latest artistic creations.

  

Companies such as Netflix, Cisco Systems and Apple amongst others, have capitalised on newly emergent innovations early on and now reap first mover benefits. Helping us understand that companies that stick to the old models and ignore what’s happening around them may struggle and fail, arguably meaning that no company is exempt from Darwin’s law of evolution.

Today, video consumption is shifting to Internet Protocol (IP) and mobile rather than archaic television. Millennials view 70 percent of their video content online, and it's predicted that by 2020, 82 percent of IP traffic will be video according to Deloitte 2015. IP video offers consumers a personalised experience with content viewable on any device. Entertainment Media as well is going through a major transformation. Netflix is in the fast lane, and the older players have had to keep up with this lightning speed or get off the freeway. The digital transformation in online streaming services and entertainment industry is not limited to developed economies, the demand for innovation in entertainment has steadily become more prevalent in developing economies such as sub-Saharan Africa

To help broaden the availability of video content to more people in Africa, Cisco Systems in partnership with EnVivo recently announced that they will offer streaming video services for Nollywood and international content across mobile devices including phones, tablets and PCs. To Nigeria, this partnership broadens the nationwide reach of Nollywood content allowing Nigerians to enjoy the vast amount of content produced by the country’s film industry. Not only does this help broaden the reach of Nollywood movies within the country but it places Nollywood actors and producers at the forefront of the African entertainment industry. This helps provide more opportunities for possible inter-country collaboration and investments. It also inspires up and coming Nigerian entertainment content developers to begin creating and monetising their own content by simply setting up their own EnVivo account and uploading content to be streamed and enjoyed by other EnVivo members. This enables them to showcase their work to an international audience in the hope that Nollywood’s’ future film projects will receive international recognition and investment.

The new EnVivo streaming service will use a mix of Cisco’s OTT video solutions including the Cisco Infinite Video Platform, along with Virtual Media Packager and Cloud Object Storage to provide better visibility across the cloud, network and client, to improve your video quality and optimize bandwidth. Using content quality metrics and optimisation techniques, Cisco Smart Streaming determines the most efficient way for your content to be encoded, packaged, delivered, and played, over any fixed or mobile network.

The Cisco Infinite Video Platform, also offers a new viewing experience and engages audiences in ways that television alone can't, it provides premium broadcast video quality on any device and Scales IP video to create personalized experiences, meaning that you can watch programs over your devices in real time and in premium video quality over any fixed or mobile network, helping save over 50% of bandwidth for content delivery. Set to be available from early 2018, the new EnVivo TV platform is targeting a region that despite its demand for content and the increase in number of cinemas, has low television penetration within households and only an average of one cinema screen per million people.

Also embedded in the new EnVivo TV platform is also Cisco’s Virtual Media Packager which helps accelerate service delivery by providing, in a single commonly managed platform, the core media origination capabilities. Cisco Virtual Media Packager is built to support the consumer services that an operator must provide in order to grow revenue. It offers easy operational constructs designed to ease the provisioning and operation of live, video-on-demand, time-shift TV, and cloud DVR services. Cisco’s technology is essentially enabling Nigerians and Africans alike who enjoy Nollywood content but can’t seem to find time to watch their favorite shows on their TV screens.

Today’s new technologies are unlocking opportunities in the entertainment and media sector. Industry mavens can now create, share and distribute content, pave new channels between distributors and consumers and revolutionize how shows are supported. With the advent of state-of-the-art functionality, we can reach a more mobile audience. We can enable heightened interaction and engagement between audiences and artists, and provide supplemental monetization.