What Will Accenture Do with NSN's IPTV Assets?

Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens Networks has exited the IPTV business, selling what was left of its main portfolio and intellectual property to consulting and integration giant, Accenture (News - Alert), for an undisclosed amount. Accenture plans to integrate the NSN platform with its plainly named Video Solution software, geared toward enabling over-the-top (OTT) TV and services.

The acquisition is a financial block-and-tackle move by NSN, which plans to cut 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013 by shedding non-core business units. But for Accenture, whose main proposition is helping operators integrate new technology for growing revenue, it means a much better stake in the broadband TV and TV Everywhere space than it had before – one of the few growing investment areas for TV operators these days.

“NIA believes that over the next six to 12 months, we are going to see every major pay-TV operator make it a priority to add multi-screen TV Everywhere rights to their content distribution renewal contracts with all major content providers,” said the National Inflation Association in a recent report. “By this time next year, TV Everywhere will literally be TV Everywhere.”

In the United States alone, all major TV providers are embracing authenticated access to content across devices, while bigwigs like Verizon (News - Alert) FiOS and DISH are prepping their own OTT services to compete with the likes of Netflix – a move sure to prompt other operators to follow.

Meanwhile, content companies themselves are following the HBO GO model, rolling out their own digital clients for Web and mobile to provide authorized access to streaming content to subscribers online.

Accenture clearly expects to be well-positioned. Specifically, through the NSN acquisition it gains the Ubiquity assets, which NSN purchased back in 2010 for its multiscreen expertise. That software, like Microsoft (News - Alert) Mediaroom, delivers encrypted video than can run on set-tops, PCs, Macs, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and other IP-enabled devices.  

It supports social networking and an API for building third-party apps as well.

Accenture’s broadband video services software, meanwhile, manages the integration of IP devices to centralized vendor IPTV or broadband platforms, and supports best-efforts-based over-the-top (OTT) distribution. Thus, the combination of the two can offer a full enablement suite for digital content distribution across infrastructures (public and managed) and screens, both operator-provided TV Everywhere and OTT content.

“Consumers want to control the content they view, but they also want to manage where and when they view that content,” said Marco Vernocchi, managing director of Accenture’s Media & Entertainment industry group. “They also want to be able to choose the device on which the content is delivered. Consumers also want the flexibility to watch a video while posting comments on social media sites or chatting with their friends about the content they are viewing. Access to content in a personalized way is here to stay, and we can expect to see even more features that allow users to make viewing a personal, mobile, dynamic video experience.”

The sale is the latest in NSN’s ongoing restructuring to halt a series of steep quarterly profit losses, so it can focus in on mobile broadband and services, where it is a market leader in sales and innovation. It is shopping its business support systems unit, and earlier this year, NSN agreed to sell its video middleware assets to Belgacom (News - Alert) SA. 

Belgacom will take over the bulk of the Myrio middleware business, which NSN inherited when it formed its JV with Siemens Communications.

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