The MultiChoice Group and its companies have aimed to provide subscribers across Africa with quality content, but it has indicated that the brand intends to adapt its content and the way it delivers the content so that it remains one of Africa's most successful entertainment businesses.

Microsoft aims to provide the platform with toolsets that allow it to take its new offerings to market in an improved manner. The partnership will enable MultiChoice to deal with the challenges of its ever-changing industry by driving efficiencies in the business through collaboration. It will also allow the brand to explore innovative ways of delivering content to its subscribers through artificial intelligence and big data analytics.

MultiChoice's digital transformation journey with Microsoft started four years ago when the company began exploring the use of Azure as a platform. The relationship since then has grown exponentially and MultiChoice is now running test and production workloads across the business.

In 2018 during the FIFA World Cup in Russia, MultiChoice demonstrated the power of cloud technology when it was able to stream the semi-final and final of the tournament to subscribers in 4k on the Azure platform.

"MultiChoice has chosen Azure as a key platform on their journey to the cloud," says Alkis Flemetakis, account director for Enterprise Commercial at Microsoft Corporation.

"They are continuously assessing the environment and, over the last four years, have created prototypes and minimum viable products on the Microsoft cloud platform. Currently, MultiChoice is looking at migrating significant IT workloads to Azure and using AI and machine learning to develop innovative solutions for their customers," adds Flemetakis.

One such project, which is currently in proof of concept, is the dubbing and subtitling of content for different markets. "We produce a lot of our own local content and there's a drive to see if we can use speech recognition to dub and subtitle that content," says Brad Eliot, group chief information officer at MultiChoice.

"With the volume of media assets, we have literally thousands and thousands of hours of content, so doing this in a non-automated fashion would just be impossible and inefficient," adds Eliot.

A second development, which will be launched next year, is automated highlights packages for sport. Using Azure, MultiChoice has indicated that it will be able to produce highlights packages in near real-time for use, not only in live broadcasts but also on social media platforms.

This means that MultiChoice can still deliver live content to customers who are 'on-the-go' but still want access to their favourite sporting content. Another added value service being explored is that of automated content moderation. Using machine learning, MultiChoice says that it is exploring ways to automate the moderation of profanity, nudity and violence. 

This links to Microsoft's approach to responsible AI and providing customers with the 'peace of mind' that their children will not have access to inappropriate content in the future.

MultiChoice is additionally looking to harness the power of AI and co-create innovation that is locally relevant. Through its partnership with Microsoft, the brand says that it is looking to leverage AI, Mixed Reality and Cognitive Services technologies that are changing the audience experience, compared to traditional static linear TV.

MultiChoice has also recognised opportunities available by leveraging the power of Microsoft's partnerships with leading media partner solutions that run on Azure. This will contribute to the modernisation of the broadcast value chain, with a smooth transition in operations and minimal upskilling of staff.

Leveraging the insights from data

MultiChoice has indicated that the ability to capture data, analyse it and then do more with it is top of mind for the brand. According to MultiChoice, the cloud allows the brand to store large amounts of data and overlay data analytics, which allows the company to develop valuable insights on how to better serve its customers.

This insight assists MultiChoice in the shift  from being a 'blanket content provider' to being able to personalise the delivery of its services to its subscribers. This is based on better knowledge of local audiences, which places it on an even footing with content providers who offer similar services.

MultiChoice can also analyse data on its devices, enabling it to predict when a device might run out of space and even monitor the device's health — reducing costs when it comes to customer support.

"We are moving towards a data and analytics-driven organisation," says Eliot. "Our data warehouses have content that facilitates understanding of our subscriber preferences."

"We are modernising our data warehouses and Microsoft is helping us with their existing technologies. At the same time, we are looking to see how we can modernise our data structures by looking at Azure data services. We are currently looking at proof of concepts for technologies, such as sim apps and hyperscale," Eliot says.  

Trust is an important factor in new opportunities

Eliot says that working with Microsoft has opened up opportunities that MultiChoice would never have been able to pursue without access to cloud computing.

"The volume of data that we have and hundreds of petabytes of media assets — to do subtitling or to do content discovery across those volumes would be impossible and inefficient with on-premises compute," he says. 

"You have to have the scale of the cloud, and that's where these new kinds of opportunities are being opened up and are becoming quite real for the first time. The machine learning that we can do and the artificial intelligence that we're working on really wouldn't be possible without access to big cloud compute," adds Eliot.

"Microsoft is in the business of collaborating with and helping organisations digitally transform, with their technologies and tools enabling their customers' success in a seamless way," Eliot concludes.