Sony announces Media Solutions Toolkit

Sony Professional has announced the launch of its Media Solutions Toolkit - a new suite of cloud-based microservices, designed to give media companies the power to build systems that address their specific production, workflows and management needs.

Within the Media Solutions Toolkit, businesses will choose and combine a number of cloud-native, specialised services, each addressing a particular function, like import or workflow management. Because each microservice can work independently of the others, customers can upgrade, add, remove or scale them as needed - with minimal disruption of service.

This modular approach will allow Sony to build and design tailored systems quicker than ever before. And media companies will avoid a long-term commitment to a fixed set of technologies, giving them tight control of their spend, better ROI and a lower total cost of ownership.

Hiroshi Kajita, Head of Media Solutions at Sony Professional Europe commented: “More than ever, the media industry requires constant adaptation and agility. Thanks to its modular nature, our Media Solutions Toolkit will give customers the chance to build a lean media management system that can transform whenever they need it to. Our aim is to empower them with the ability to adapt, upgrade and expand their capabilities long into the future.”

The announcement reflects Sony’s direction to support customers’ transformation towards digital production in the cloud, as the company moves to create services and solutions driven by flexibility as well as powerful technical capability.

The Media Solutions Toolkit will be available from May 2021, as a subscription, a managed service or via licenses. While designed for cloud and hybrid environments, it will also be deployable on-premise.

The Media Solutions Toolkit will include the following microservices when it launches:

  • Ingest Management Service: management of file and stream imports;
  • Content Management Service: for organising media and its metadata;
  • Content Analysis Service: analytics that add to a file’s metadata automatically, including auto-tagging for archiving and object recognition in footage;
  • Workflow Management Service: management of the entire production chain, from capture to distribution;
  • Data and Monitoring Service: overarching view of how media is accessed and used, with logs, metrics and system reports;
  • Volume Management Service: management of all storage resources, whether cloud or on-premise;
  • User Management Service: control of access to specific folders and systems, for groups and individuals.

Sony plans for microservices to underpin many of its future applications; The Media Solutions Toolkit will also integrate with existing Sony applications, such as the Ci cloud platform and third-party applications.