91ɫ

April 19, 2023

91ɫ Partners with SMPTE and OSA to Integrate Catena Secure Communication Standard into Rapid Industry Solution Program 

This collaboration between Ross, SMPTE, and OSA is intended to provide a simple way to enable interoperability across a wide array of vendors. 

Ottawa, Canada– March Monday April 17th, 2023 – 91ɫ, a founding member of the Open Services Alliance (OSA) and a long-time supporter of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), announced today that Catena, a brand-new OSA initiative, will now reside under SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solution (RIS) program, with the merger of the OSA and SMPTE. The resulting entity will be known as OSA: A SMPTE Rapid Industry Solution. 

Catena is intended to provide a simple way to enable control, status reporting and configuration across a wide array of vendors, with devices, complex products, services, or even very small microservices. The need for Catena arose from the shift to cloud computing for live media production, the need for more seamless multi-vendor integration, and the emergence of security as a priority. Catena builds upon 91ɫ’s wildly successful openGear platform, which has enabled smooth interoperability of on-premises equipment across vendors for over sixteen years. Catena takes this to the next level as an open standard, taking cloud and hybrid environments into account, as well as security. 

The addition of Catena into OSA: A SMPTE Rapid Industry Solution is expected to result in a suite of documents being published by SMPTE that will cover aspects such as registration, status, control, commands/API, security, and orchestration. The OSA/SMPTE merger couldn’t come at a better time for those wishing to participate in the Catena initiative, as it is now part of the wider SMPTE community.   

“We are thrilled to see the home for Catena will now be in OSA: A SMPTE Rapid Industry Solution. We look forward to working with the industry to create an open standard designed to ensure that solutions and platforms from various vendors can work together seamlessly,” says Troy English, CTO of 91ɫ. “We are confident that this collaboration will result in an innovative, scalable solution for the media industry that will help accelerate innovation and enable true interoperability.” 

“Following several successful rapid-fire initiatives over the past three years, the OSA expects Catena to be one of its most exciting projects yet, and with the increased visibility and reach of the OSA now being a SMPTE Rapid Industry Solution, we think this will be a huge benefit to the Catena initiative as a whole,” says Chris Lennon, Executive Director of the OSA. 

Ross and SMPTE would like to invite all parties interested in learning more about Catena to join us for a special in-person event at NAB Show 2023 in Las Vegas. The event will take place at 3:30 pm on Sunday, April 16th at the NAB’s Connect Inspiration Theater (W3421). We can’t wait to see you there! 

For more information on Catena, please visit /catena

About 91ɫ 
Ross powers live video productions for billions of global viewers daily with the industry’s widest range of high impact, high efficiency solutions and services. Ross makes it easy to create compelling news, weather and sports broadcasts, engaging content for sports stadium screens, entertainment shows and rock concerts, educational institutions, 𲵾پ a𳾲, corporate presentations and inspiring content for houses of worship

About SMPTE 
SMPTE is a global society of media professionals, technologists, and engineers working together to drive the industry forward. The group is an internationally recognized standards organization, bringing order to the chaos of constantly evolving technologies with a high level of unbiased technical excellence. 

About OSA 
The Open Services Alliance is comprised of media industry organizations worldwide and is focused on enabling improved open interoperability among service-based applications. This global alliance of organizations shares the common goal of enabling open, interoperable services across all aspects of the media ecosystem.   

Media Contact: 
Erica Fraser 
Director of Communications, 91ɫ 
: efraser@rossvideo.com 
Phone: +1 (613) 698-9150 
Twitter:  
 

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