UAE Broadcasters Lead USD 16 Billion Media Innovation Market

UAE broadcasters are leading innovation in the world’s USD 16 billion digital media and entertainment market, optimizing how customers experience content on any device at any time.

Numerous media free zones -- such as Dubai Production City, Dubai Media City, and Dubai Studio City, and TwoFour54 in Abu Dhabi -- enhance the UAE’s standing as a regional and global hub for broadcast media. 

In response to changing customer needs, the UAE is at the forefront of digital innovation in audiovisual content creation and distribution across multiple formats, channels, and languages, argues Condo Protego, the UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider.

“Broadcast media – whether TV, video on demand at home, or digital videos in taxis – has become pervasive in our lives in the UAE, and will only continue to increase,” said Savitha Bhaskar, COO, Condo Protego. “UAE media companies are among global early adopters in having content readily accessible to create, distribute, personalize, and analyze content from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.”

In 2018, Condo Protego worked closely on the digital transformation of one of the UAE’s largest broadcast companies. The broadcaster rolled-out high-performance, purpose-built infrastructure to support its digital media production and expansion.

As media companies adopt high definition formats such as 4K and digitize archives, the global media and entertainment storage market will grow by 45 percent to USD 16 billion by 2021, according to a   recent  Technavio report. Condo Protego estimates that UAE media companies adopted 20-25 petabytes of storage in 2018.

“Digital transformation and integrating cloud, storage, mobility, and analytics can enable media companies to personalize content to customer needs, scale up for the future, and optimize production time, quality, and costs,” added Savitha Bhaskar.

Another facet of storage for media is in CCTV, which often have strict quality requirements that require flexible and scalable storage solutions.

Condo Protego is seeing strong demand on   Dell EMC ’s  Isilon scale-out network attached storage. Using Dell EMC Isilon, media companies can reduce IT management, enable new formats and targeting, and enhance production efficiency.