AGILE TOOLS FOR AGILE NEWS CGI’s acquisition of OpenMedia is good news for broadcasters
hen CGI brought newsroom systems expert OpenMedia into the fold, both
mindset, a shared vision and internal transparency support our business agility. All our teams understand the actual necessities and priorities.” The changing nature of news platforms – and the fight against misinformation – means that the factual information space is a fluid landscape. Providers, audience preferences and new technologies are always interacting in novel ways. Broadcast teams have to adjust workflows for efficiency and traction. “You don’t know which platform will be big next year, or in two years. You need to be really flexible,” adds CGI’s VP of newsroom solutions, Michael Pfitzner. “Broadcasters are now dividing their various content outputs between different publishing channels. The earlier approach, which was to produce once and then publish everywhere, did not work out as expected. Audience centricity is key, as channels have distinct needs.” For the development of products, customer feedback is continuously incorporated into OpenMedia solutions, including a new
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sides knew it was a chance to create new ways of serving content makers and news agencies. “OpenMedia brought a missing piece to the company mosaic. It was a very good fit,” says Mark Hasselmann, product manager for CGI’s OpenMedia suite. “With our complementary portfolios, we can provide end-to-end IT and consulting services to media industry clients.” The OpenMedia team has brought with it agile ways of working, and fuelled the transition within CGI. Combined with the expertise and global reach of CGI, this creates a synergy that will help meet customer needs more rapidly and create new services. The fast-paced media market has become increasingly diverse, with public broadcasters, smaller private stations and online-only platforms all requiring unique solutions. “We will offer services for all of these players,” says Hasselmann. “An agile
reporter app and an upgrade of the OpenMedia NewsBoard planning tool. With it, new microservices architecture is scheduled for 2022. “We will keep supporting existing systems, while bringing innovation to factual content production,” Pfitzner states. Over the course of the pandemic, newsrooms have been forced to expand the idea of what is possible, incorporating remote working and collaboration between distributed production teams. Lessons learnt about workflow will remain as the new normal in the future. News production has become more agile, more creative and – as the last year has proved – more important. “Information and news are getting more relevant for broadcasters,” says Hasselmann. “In a world with so many streaming services, the differentiator is valid information. The content you want to see can be found in the form you want to see it – provided by your trusted network.”
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