AVID Needs To Think Outside The Box

(From The Yahoo Avid User's Group -- By Frank Capria)

The AVID PRODUCT LINE, after being cleaned up a couple of years ago, has again become bloated and fragmented.

A customer should be able to state a business problem and there should be a single AVID solution to that problem. That's not the case. While some overlap in product lines is necessary, AVID's overlaps have become excessive, and its corporate messaging is not very clear as to which product is aimed at a specific market.

Earlier you brought up the WAL-MARTING of our cozy, little industry. New technologies launch and initially, due to IP protections and other barriers to entry, the industry is either a monopoly or highly consolidated. Many clever entrepreneurs use the high barriers to entry that the high monopoly prices to their advantage. Smart ones realize that game can't last forever because eventually a competitor will break the monopoly and lower everyone's barriers to entry. So, yes, you are right -- it appears cost should be the primary determinant in selecting gear. NLE offerings to all but the largest shops are near parity these days.

AVID really hurt themselves by diluting the specialness of the AVID user experience. As he put it, what made an AVID an AVID.

Beyond inconsistencies in the UI, the cross-platform thing has become a bit messy. How much longer before we see HD on the MAC? It's almost 2006. A lot of companies (with far less resources than AVID) have been giving us HD on the MAC for some time. There's really no excuse for this. Blaming APPLE for OS changes just doesn't cut it any more. Got a MAC? Can't grow with AVID. That's a lot of (formerly loyal) customers to ignore.

After some very painful years, our industry is poised for some real growth opportunities. That stupid little video IPOD is IPTV. It's here. Call it video podcasting or whatever you like, but niche content can be distributed effectively to smaller audiences. There is money to be made serving 5-digit audiences. The wireless XBoxes, PlayStations, and PSPs will accelerate the trend.

My question is -- Where's AVID? Make, manage, and move. Well, how do you help me do that in the new decentralized universe?

APPLE isn't there yet, but everyone can see where this is going. From the FCP timeline I will be able to publish directly to ITUNES. The master's done and a few minutes later it's already in distribution. It's a total workflow and media management challenge. Isn't this what AVID's supposed to do best? Where's the strategy? It need not be articulated in the specific, but like APPLE's strategy, it should be obvious what direction AVID is heading in this new world order.

There's still a lot of money to be made servicing big media. But there's going to be just as much to be made serving smaller shops.

As I mentioned last week on AVID -- there are 50,000 non-payroll entities in the video production business. If 20% are willing to spend from $1,000 to $3,000 on IPTV editing and publishing solutions, that's $30 million a year to be made from IP already sitting on the shelf. Imagine the opportunities in servicing the subscription and distribution needs of these producers -- make, manage, and move. If IPTV's not all about that, I don't know what is.

APPLE owns ITUNES, is invested in AKAMAI, has been pushing affordable shared storage solutions, has developed a suite of products that allows one workstation to bring content from tape to its distribution format. And they are moving to an Intel-based architecture.

AVID's got to decide whether it wants to limit itself to remaining the supplier of digital plumbing in huge facilities, or take a step towards greater growth in the wider world. NLEs that are little islands that only do one or two things well aren't going to cut it in small and mid-sized facilities that need to post broadband, mobile, IPTV, and DVD content. We need compression, authoring, and asset management solutions. AVID can do this, but it has start thinking outside the box.

Too much coffee on a Monday morning.