The return of the NAB Show in Las Vegas was nothing short of amazing. It was very special to be able to meet again with our customers, partners, and the media community as a whole after a two-year hiatus. Even though attendance was down by about half in comparison to pre-COVID shows, those attending were business and technology decision makers coming with real-life problems to solve and upcoming initiatives to discuss. The quality of the interactions was very high. More importantly, the 2022 NAB was held in a very positive atmosphere and it represented an exciting comeback for the industry.

Looking at the trends

What we saw at NAB was aligned with the trends identified by Caretta Research ahead of the show and what we have seen since the beginning of the year. The first trend we saw is that investment in media technology is now driven by problem solving. While new technology, prototypes, and product reveals still make the headlines, the NAB Show has now clearly taken the trajectory of a business show. Business, editorial, and creative decision makers are looking for solutions to the problems they encounter along the media value chain, especially around remote production and collaboration, scale and automation, as well as digital-native content operations.

A second trend noticeable at the event is the desire for flexible deployments and the demand for modular technologies. Media-rich organizations want to “future-proof” their operations and to enhance the management of components’ lifespan. Open platforms and “operating systems”, seamlessly integrated into the wider ecosystem, are becoming the focal point of media production, management, and distribution workflows, often with marketplace models.

The third major trend is about cloud-native architectures and how they enable products that are faster, more reliable, and more affordable. SaaS offerings with a lower cost of entry are being brought to market, thanks to multi-tenanted architectures that enable economies of scale. With the elasticity of the cloud at their fingertips, media organizations can quickly scale resources as required with control over budgets.

We at Dalet are embracing these trends to always bring more value to our customers with transformative products. The launch of Dalet Flex for teams, a SaaS solution that provides professional-grade media logistics tools to smaller crews and organizations, is the perfect reflection of that.

Making time to talk

Communication is important with our customers. We truly believe we work better as a team. Open communication is at our core, and co-innovation is a mantra. We’ve discussed countless number of times with our customers and partners how agility has become so important. The ability to deploy solutions easily and to be extremely fast in launching new initiatives has become paramount. SaaS is a key ally in this endeavor.

Achieving scale through automation and workflow orchestration is still very high on the list for our customers, and our products have been making a difference in that area for many years. In addition, and together with smart, AI-powered tools, media-rich organizations are now putting much more focus on UI and UX, a big shift in our industry. These discussions with customers are becoming more common, as well as more advanced in terms of the strategies they deploy to distribute the right content to the right audiences on the right platforms. Helping customers scale and streamline their operations is a major focus.

Conversations around onboarding, training, user experience, and customer success are also much more common. These are very much valued by all stakeholders. Dalet is a customer-centric company; and we are building the teams and the structure around customer success. We help media-rich organizations maximize ROI and outcomes on their investment and overall satisfaction with a simple philosophy: their success is our success.

So, book a meeting with us sometime. It’s great to talk!

An interview with IABM TV on industry trends, the latest releases from Dalet, and what is coming in the future (Click here to watch the interview)

Showcasing Dalet latest innovations

In the same mindset of remaining customer-centric, Dalet’s leadership team and media workflow specialists were at the event, showcasing our latest innovations in content workflow solutions, cloud-native technology, and user experience.

Attendees stopping by the Dalet booth were able to discover two offerings for the first time, Dalet Flex for teams offered as-a-service for all teams with digital media management and multiplatform delivery requirements, and Dalet Pyramid solutions to enable modern storytelling and news production practices with centralized planning, remote editing, and digital-native production capabilities.

The industry recognition we received for these new offerings was a proud moment for the #DaletTeam. While Dalet Pyramid won NewscastStudio’s Broadcast Production Award for “Best New Product or Service – Production”, Dalet Flex for teams was awarded “Best in Show” from TVTech.

As a key technology partner and their chosen Media Asset Management partner, Dalet was also present at the AWS booth. Both Dalet Flex as-a-service and Dalet Pyramid running on AWS infrastructure were on display and received a warm welcome. Dalet and AWS power some of the most advanced cloud-native and hybrid media workflows.

Dalet Flex for teams was a featured demo at the AWS booth on the 2022 NAB show floor

What comes next? Focus.

The question we find ourselves often asking is “What comes next?”

For us at Dalet, we keep our attention on the value we provide through state-of-the-art media workflows – the life’s blood of any newsroom, sports coverage, content owner, or media production facility. This is what we do, and we focus on it. Today, our customers not only evaluate products but also roadmaps, development priorities, and company culture. They buy from companies they want to work with. We are more than software.

With that in mind, I’ll conclude this article with a quote from Dalet’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Stephane Guez:

“We’re thrilled to reconnect in person with our partners and customers to share our latest innovations for digital media workflows. We’ve been hard at work investing in and developing modern technologies to meet the demands of today’s media rich organizations. To support this, we have expanded the Dalet Team with media, cloud, and security experts whose focus is to enable wider market adoption of Dalet solutions beyond the traditional borders of broadcast. These investments coupled with our intense R&D and project management efforts have enabled us to deliver an NAB showcase that we’re incredibly proud of: budget-friendly pre-configured, convenient, yet secure workflow cloud-based offerings with state-of-the-art UX and UI experiences customers expect.”

We are part of an industry and a world in a state of permanent change. Mature and stable like a large corporation, yet agile and growing like a start-up, we continue to shape the future of media production, management and distribution workflows. Join us!