As a tech leader, you have 3 types of resources at your command – People, Time & Money. And each of these is available in a finite amount of resources.
Like any true-blue techie who’s ever played a RTS sim like Age of Empires II will tell you, the volume of resources you possess is of little consequence, it’s what you do with it that counts.
And when you’re a CTO / Tech Leader in a media house and have been charged with ushering in the OTT revolution – you’ve got a heady task of managing your resources wisely. It seems like a no-brainer to start heavily investing from the get-go in setting up a tech team, creating long development cycles, hiring Quality Analysts, partnering with vendors, etc. But at what cost? And when can you expect to see the fruit of your efforts – in the first year? 2 years? Globally, the OTT industry has a set of de-facto guidelines (set by some of the top international players) that determine how users will experience your platform.
If the ballgame has its pre-set rules, why re-engineer the wheel and create the entire OTT app ecosystem from scratch? It’s much easier to simply work with an experienced partner and handover all your tech headaches for a fraction of the time, people & money required to build things in-house.
But, what happens when you delegate? Let’s look at 5 of the top benefits of working with a partner to go live faster!
Table of Contents
Focus on the core of your core business – content
Consumers today have a strong binge-watching habit when it comes to OTT apps. They expect new & fresh content to binge on as soon as they’re done with what they’re watching currently. What’s new and trending attracts the most eyeballs! Thus, Content Generation, Production & Distribution are primary focus areas for every Media House that’s building an OTT ecosystem. When you already have so much on your plate, why reinvent the wheel on the technology front? Instead of creating an entire tech development function in the organisation, CTO’s & Tech Heads today can leverage industry standard practices for front-end and back-end infrastructure by simply liaising with a tech partner that can help them be up and running within weeks.
Build Simultaneously
If you’re going the Rambo way into OTT, the volume of resources you need grows in relation to the number of platforms you’re building for. Instead, through a reliable OTT tech partner, you could get custom apps made for various platforms like Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Android, iOS, Roku and most other leading ones with the flick of a switch and that too, simultaneously!
Save on CAPEX, Reduce OPEX
Building an OTT platform from scratch requires a lot of initial monetary investment to build and grow the platform. Once built, the platform will require ongoing maintenance and attention that attracts incremental costs as well. Building a team, system/app from scratch can have a minimum $1 Million+ CAPEX investment at huge risk of it not delivering & panning out as expected. Wouldn’t it be great if you could free up most of these budgets to attract new customers and earn revenue? By working with a tech partner, you can get your content to ‘work’ for you from the first week itself!
Avoid Tech Debt
Tech developments require a lot of resources & processes in place. Many of these will not stand the test of time and there will always be lag that creeps in. Milestones not being met, quality checks breaking down, latest updates breaking the experience, key decision makers on holiday, etc. When you’re on your way to making a global OTT brand, these problems can delay that prize by a large margin. Delegating your tech requirements simply saves you the operational costs of people, time, money and skips this entire headache to get you to the top spot within a few weeks / months.
Skip The Legwork
A successful OTT platform is an open network – with connections to various other partners that help with content storage, CDNs, seamless payments across the globe, security, user management, etc. The list is endless . While it’s possible do this back-breaking work all on your own, there’s no justification for blocking development time & resources to make your platform perform like a connected network, when there exist OTT partners out there that can help with connecting you to a plethora of partners across the globe with the single click of a button. (Yep, the rise of the machines that Arnold Schwarzenegger warned us about in Terminator 2 is already here!)
While we’ve covered a few benefits of working with an OTT Partner to leverage industry best practices and processes, there is a huge list of advantages to this that we’ll be happy to share with you. Simply drop us a line!
What challenges are you facing currently?
