Forbidden's Fruit: FORscene And The Future Of The Cloud (Pt. 1)

Forbidden Technologies was founded by Stephen Streater in 1998 and has since risen to become one of the world's most successful Cloud-based video tools providers. Forbidden's products cover a range of solutions and services, including news production, on-air graphics and self-service syndication. FORscene is perhaps the company's best-known product, recognised as being one of the most advanced and reliable web-based editing systems available. RFV caught up with Mr Streater at the beginning of another challenging year for the industry.

Forbidden continues to expand, with new staff having already been appointed since the New Year. What are the company's plans for 2014, and beyond?

Global expansion, in particular in the US, is the main reason for Forbidden raising capital last summer. This single funding provided more cash than we have received in the previous fourteen years combined. The R&D staff additions announced since the New Year (and there are more to come) have been brought in for a very specific reason: to support the US expansion being led by our new US operation.
The company has also been expanding its commercial department. The appointment of exceptional staff in our US office has triggered a long overdue step up in awareness of the benefits of FORscene workflows in the US. Back in the UK, new marketing resources are clarifying our message. A number of appointments are ongoing to allow us to take a more active look at new sales opportunities.
One sector in particular where we are expecting growth in 2014 and beyond is Sports. Forbidden provides a superb and proven sports offering, with major successes in 2012 and 2013. We have recently become Gold Sponsors of SVG Europe.
We are using our new resources to drive through a long, planned transformation in our offers. The first examples of this will be released at NAB in the spring, but the impact will be felt over many years.

Given the success of the company's FORscene platform, is Cloud the future of the industry? What are the advantages of this mode of storage for your customers?

Storage and processing power are key elements of the Cloud - which provides essentially unlimited access to both. But scaling up doesn't come for free, and this is where the efficiency of the FORscene architecture comes into its own.
It's what FORscene does with the available resources that makes the difference, demonstrating the Cloud's real potential. FORscene harnesses the CPU power of the users' PCs. This gives responsiveness only available with an intelligent local client. Importantly, post production in FORscene uses proxy video streams, specially designed to run as part of a Cloud solution.
The high datarate original sources are not needed - or used - for high volume stages such as logging, but are available for publishing finished programmes. Like a fast sports car, power is available when needed - but there's no point in paying for the engine to rev at full power all the time.
The FORscene Cloud changes people's lives by giving everyone working on each project immediate access to the vast resources of the Cloud, including all their material - and each other - wherever they are.
FORscene has already been used by production company Wall to Wall when editing the BBC's 'The Voice' talent show.

Are there any other case studies you can tell us about, or any further projects in the pipeline?

It's great that FORscene has been able to contribute to the Voice's success. We like to engage with our clients, and for the Voice we added a new feature to help their workflow. Client confidentiality usually limits what we say about any specific programme, but I can say that FORscene use reached new records again last year, with over 100 active professional productions in a single month.
Exciting as the operational side of TV series work is, it's also worth mentioning the more strategic work we are undertaking with our commercial partners to drive expansion across the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Major projects, pilots and integration work cover multiple new uses of the FORscene platform. They benefit from its global reach and responsiveness (even on slow internet connections). One particularly popular feature is the ability to edit videos from multiple live sources and then publish at high definition.
The insatiable demand from the web distribution world for more professionally made content is a major source of demand for FORscene's publishing capabilities. This trend was started by our corporate partners, who export directly from FORscene to their favourite CDN. Now, it is even more marked in sports, where near-live distribution on the web of high quality edited highlights is a must-have.
To give an indication of the increase in the pace, after doubling capacity every year for many years, we have already begun to roll out a tenfold increase in cloud capacity this year.

Read the article in the online edition of RFV here.
(IT/JP)