MONTREAL—Three years after being acquired by private enquiry firm Black Dragon, Grass Valley announced this week that it has completed the three-year business transformation of Grass Valley and has transitioned to what it terms “growth mode.”
The period has been a tumultuous one for Grass Valley, particularly in terms of leadership, with several CEOs coming and going. A year and a half after the acquisition, the company saw the resignation of its executive leadership, with then CEO/president Tim Shoulders and Mario Lopez, GM of live production, leaving the company. At that point, Black Dragon CEO Louis Hernandez assumed leadership.
In March 2022, the company made headlines again with the appointment of Andrew Cross, former CEO of NewTek, who was, at the time, president of Global R&D for Vizrt, which had acquired NewTek in 2019. By November, Cross was out, resigning because of a restructure of Grass Valley “due to market conditions,” according to then CMO Neil Maycock, who has also since left the company.
During the three year period, the company has emphasized customer feedback, launching the GVX leadership council in 2020. The group is comprised of over 35 recognized leaders in the media technology industry, providing valuable insights into important issues faced by M&E, market trends, and technology needs that GV and its ecosystem partners should address.
It has also launched the GV Alliance initiative, a rapidly expanding, open digital community committed to developing an integrated ecosystem delivering standardized, pre-validated workflows for the industry, as well as GVOne, to help customers identify business opportunities, focus on key clients, streamline their operational interfaces and improving on quality of service
In terms of the company’s products and services, considering how much has changed in terms of live media production over the past three years—accelerated by the pandemic—Grass says it is emphasizing its cloud based and connected solutions. GV says it has simplified its organization, “focusing on improved client service, along with dramatic and continued investments in its market-leading integrated hardware solutions.” It has also increased its investment in its cloud-native AMPP ecosystem and connected GV Alliance solutions, both part of what it calls the “Grass Valley Media Universe (GVMU)” suite, touting it as "the most open and integrated ecosystem in the market."
“I’m very proud of the incredible transformation that the Grass Valley family has navigated.” said Grass Valley’s Chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr. “We set out a bold ambition to reimagine the future workflow for media and to accomplish this we’d have to work closely with our clients, who themselves are transforming to win in the next phase. We’ve simplified our organizational structure, with leadership changes and key new hires, optimized our global facilities, and focused our product portfolio to align with the changing media landscape. With the supply chain issues subsiding, we are seeing a considerable reduction in our backlog. I’m excited for our team and our industry that we are in a position to surge when our clients need us most.”
Since the launch of AMPP, the company says it has finessed its hardware portfolio, with new innovations closely tied to the AMPP ecosystem set to be unveiled soon. Together with key hardware integrations, the company has developed close to 100 native applications and certified nearly 80 Alliance partners within AMPP's open and integrated ecosystem. The platform provides clients with an open multi-vendor platform for live, production, and playout workflows as cloud-native solutions. Additionally, Grass Valley has enhanced the AMPP deployment models to encompass on-premises, cloud-hosted, or hybrid configurations—all while retaining the advantages of a cloud-native architecture. These innovations have resulted in eight significant patents issued in the first half of 2023 alone.
Grass says it “has experienced a strong surge in performance over the last year and has more than doubled its earnings in the last year alone.” Notably, AMPP has exhibited over 200% year-over-year growth since 2020, having already achieved over 100% of its 2022 targets to date. Average application usage in AMPP now exceeds 3 million hours per month globally.
"With AMPP, we've ushered in a new era of cloud-native, open, and integrated solutions for media production, giving our clients the freedom to craft their workflows as they envision, whether it's on-premises, in the cloud, or a seamless blend of both,” said Grass Valley’s CPO, Adam Marshall.
“Combine this with Grass Valley's industry leading innovations in cameras, routing, processing, and switchers, it underscores our steadfast commitment to propelling advancements in media technology.”
In tandem with its expansion initiatives, Grass Valley has appointed three key executives to its leadership team, closing the final phase of its three-year transformation plan:
New appointments were announced with Jon Wilson being named Chief Operating Officer (COO), effective Oct. 1, 2023. Wilson, former president and COO at Telestream previously served as CFO for just under three years. Effective immediately, Ian Fletcher has been appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) following his tenure as Senior Vice President VP of Enterprise Product Strategy. Prior to this, he held the position of Chief Application Designer within the Advanced Technology Group, playing a pivotal role in the inception and continuous enhancement and development of AMPP.
Adam Marshall is appointed as Chief Product Officer (CPO) effective immediately, following his previous role as VP of Marketing for Grass Valley. Marshall previously held the position of Pre-Sales Director and prior to that, Senior Global Pre-Sales Manager for AMPP & Playout. In his new role, Marshall will continue to have overall marketing responsibility for Grass Valley.
Grass Valley says it is on track to meet its goal, set in 2021, of hiring over 400 new employees by the end of 2023, distributed across key global centers of excellence in Krakow, Poland; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Montreal, Canada, the company's operations center of excellence.
Grass Valley will exhibit at the 2023 IBC Show in Amsterdam, Sept. 15-18 in Stand 9-A01.
