Emmanuel Frenehard, Chief Technology Officer, iflix

What's the biggest technology challenge you face in adding (or boosting) your online and/or streaming video elements?
"As we continue to add millions of viewers to our platform, scaling to support the demands of all these users is probably our biggest challenge."

Is there any one particular technology that has made a radical difference to the way you operate? What is it?
"We radically re-designed the way we collect data from our apps and the way we use that data to make decisions on a day-to-day basis. This includes content decisions, app functionality, marketing, messaging and many more domains. Our real-time data pipeline combined with the empowerment of all our employees to access the data means we are now able to make higher quality decisions on a daily basis."

What do you wish broadcast/streaming tech vendors would do (or say or offer) for you that they aren't doing now?
"As a company, we tend to prefer to build our technology platform rather than relying on partners since we frequently change direction and have a deep need to retain flexibility and agility. We do work with a few key strategic partners with whom we've had a long established relationship. What we have built with them is a deep relationship of trust and transparency which is critical to joint success. Too often, vendors promise capabilities that they just don't have or are not market ready and when they get hit with the iflix volumes and sophistication, they crumble and fail to deliver."

What's at the top of your tech wish list for 2019?
"Simplicity and personalisation. We are still at the beginning of our amazing journey to deliver video to tens of millions of people across Southeast Asia and to do this in a way that works without technology friction and at the same time fully personalised to the users. Top of our list is to make video delivery simpler for our users and do it in a way that recognises the individualistic nature of content preferences."

Published in ContentAsia Issue Six 2019, 4 November 2019