SKY Network Television New Zealand Migrates Operations To Pilat Media's IBMS V6

Pilat Media Global, a leading supplier of business management software to the media industry, has announced that SKY New Zealand has completed a successful migration to version 6 of the company's Integrated Broadcast Management System (IBMS).
Through seamless links to automation, media asset management (MAM) and online media systems, the IBMS upgrade will provide a platform for SKY to deploy numerous projects supporting enhanced service offerings and future expansion.
SKY is a direct-to-home satellite broadcaster providing more than 110 pay-TV channels with market penetration of more than 47 percent of New Zealand viewers. IBMS has controlled and managed programming and broadcast schedules for SKY since 1999, making the broadcaster one of Pilat Media's oldest customers.
Brian Sims, Technology Delivery Manager, Media and Customer at Sky, said: :As longtime customers of Pilat Media, we rely heavily on IBMS to automate and coordinate all of our content acquisition, planning, scheduling and playout processes - and the system has grown with us over the years as we have taken on increasingly complex workflows. Migrating to version 6 was the next logical step to meet our new business challenges. Since this was our first IBMS upgrade in a few years and the system will lay the foundation for numerous mission-critical applications, the project was understandably complex - but it was a huge success thanks to the professionalism and expertise of both the Pilat Media and SKY project teams."
With the migration to IBMS version 6, SKY is leveraging advanced key features to implement significant new functionality at the broadcaster's digital network operations centre in Auckland. For instance, IBMS version 6's on-demand planning functionality will drive scheduling for SKY's online media player, iSKY, which will power SKY's Web TV offerings. The on-demand planner will integrate with content acquisitions under control of IBMS to manage scheduling of non-linear playout according to rights agreements for each asset. In addition, SKY will rely on the /NET-based capabilities of IBMS version 6 to provide seamless content exchange with its upcoming media asset management (MAM) system.
Tuval Lava, COO of Pilat Media, said: "We have had the pleasure of helping SKY New Zealand grow its operations significantly over the past eleven years based on our industry-leading business management platform - and we're pleased that version 6 will play such an important role in shaping the company's future service offerings. Like many of our customers, SKY is taking advantage of the component architecture, user interface improvements via the .NET framework and increased technical flexibility and integration points that version 6 provides."
(KMcA)