By Michael Adams, Solution Area TV, Ericsson
Today’s subscribers are demanding more and more from their service providers:
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Personalization: New behaviors from a new generation of “digital natives”, (who expect the service to adapt to them!), powerful search capabilities, and recommendations engines.
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Communication: Multitasking, social networking, and sharing the viewing experience through chat and instant messaging
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Interactivity: Polls, games, and enhanced programming
And subscribers want all the above services and features to be delivered as a single, integrated service experience across any device, anywhere, and at anytime!
The Internet has shown how to deliver all kinds of services by means of thin-client approaches using the Representational State Transfer (REST) model. Meanwhile, most deployed cable architectures still rely on a “state-full”, thick-client approach.
Can thin-client architectures really satisfy large cable system requirements for performance, scalability, high-availability, emergency-alert system requirements, and compatibility with existing interactive application environments such as EBIF?
This paper will show how a thin-client, browser-based approach can: * Support rapid development of new applications without the need for new software download to the set-top * Enable personalization of a service to each subscriber’s preferences * Allow full customization of the user-interface , including branding * Allow the use of third-party developers, using Web 2.0 service creation methods * Provide set-top independence and multiplatform portability * Decouple CA/DRM certification from new features and applications development