In this IABM TV interview, Alison Pavitt (Director or Sales and Marketing, Pebble) discusses the biggest challenges for the industry this year and how does Pebble address these.
Watch the interview HERE.
Month: April 2022
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All of us at Pebble are absolutely over the moon to have won the Remote Team of the Year category at The UK Company Culture Awards! To be recognised in this way is a testament of the brilliant efforts of every ‘pebble’ to deliver the best they can, all in the midst of a global pandemic.
A third of employees were recruited remotely since October 2020.
As an organisation we all work by these company values:
- Be the expert – we are proud of our expertise and enthusiastic about sharing knowledge. We are always learning.
- Find a solution – We are agile and versatile. We will not give up.
- Do the right thing – We operate with integrity, openness and honesty to earn and deserve trust.
- Success through partnership – We are passionate about the power of collaborative, supportive relationships.
- Every pebble matters – We embrace talent, treat each other with respect, and work to build a friendly, supportive environment.
Transitioning into a remote first business
After careful consideration and following a staff survey, Pebble decided to move permanently to a remote working model early in 2020. Over 40% of staff were already based outside the UK and during lockdown we successfully remotely designed, delivered and took to air hundreds of TV channels and over hundreds of different projects, with more than half of those projects happening concurrently. Upgrades, support and training continued virtually too. When restrictions eased last summer, we moved towards a remote working model that was sustainable for us and our customers. Becoming a remote first company isn’t the same as simply continuing working from home, so we took the step of recruiting a Head of Remote to help us intentionally transition to a remote first operation.
We now have access to a much larger pool of talent to support our growth, as new ‘pebbles’ can be located wherever their lifestyle takes them, be it next to the beach in Biarritz, in the fells of Cumbria, or in São Paulo, Brazil! Other new recruits are from Spain, Russia and Croatia as well as various locations across the UK.
Remote working brings its own challenges. Communication and collaboration between our teams and customers has never been more important. One of our core values at Pebble is ‘every pebble matters’, and regular check-ins, as well as access to support for any mental health issues have been key.
Through regular communication, we create a friendly and supportive environment in which our teams can flourish. Every week our CEO sends a Friday update email highlighting how teams and individuals have collaborated and achieved across the week, with staff contributions encouraged. This helps everyone stay connected and is an important weekly acknowledgement of how everyone makes a positive difference. Our CEO also hosts regular online ‘Coffee Conversations’ with small groups to maintain connection and keep lines of communication open.
Winners
Being selected as winners of the Remote Team of the Year award is a fantastic achievement, particularly as we know how seriously the judges take each award entry. We’re incredibly proud and truly excited to have won!
As a specialist B2B technology company our bespoke solutions ensure broadcast channels stay on air. Our software makes TV happen for millions of viewers worldwide. Each installation is developed in a collaborative and consultative process and can take months to design and longer to implement. Doing this effectively as a remote team takes dedication, discipline and determination, and our 2021 trading results are testament to the team’s success.
Becoming ‘remote first’ was a collaborative decision; we collectively agreed this was the right way forward for the business. To transition effectively we recruited a Head of Remote to examine all our systems and processes, and to ensure every ‘pebble’ has a voice.
Using our company values to guide our decision-making, we have built on our resilience as an organisation, providing staff with clear communications, bold decision-making, and demonstrable continuity in how we operate as a business. Every individual has an allowance to create the optimal working from home setup, and a monthly allowance to cover remote working costs.
This modern, forward-looking strategy removes the slog of a daily commute to give all ‘pebbles’ a better work life balance, resets the rules of how we effectively manage meaningful communications, and delivers a level playing field to each ‘pebble’, allowing every one of them to live where their heart lies and not where our HQ sits.
To have won the award for Remote Team of the Year at the UK Company Culture Awards is an amazing way to champion our ‘pebbles’ and celebrate our company culture via such a prestigious public platform. Thank you to the judges for choosing us as WINNERS!
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Pebble Control Free is designed to “democratise” IP and hybrid broadcast environments, bringing IP connection management capabilities to a wider audience through Pebble’s new self-service portal.
Weybridge, Surrey, UK – 21 April 2022: Pebble, the leading automation, content management, and integrated channel specialist, is launching a freemium version of Pebble Control, its self-contained, scalable, and easy to configure IP connection management system. Pebble Control Free is available to download from Pebble’s new self-service portal, giving the broadcast community the ability to take their first steps into IP autonomously.
The freemium version is designed to support broadcasters and production facilities of any size as they manage their transition from traditional broadcast infrastructures to more flexible IP-based technologies. It offers many of the same capabilities as Pebble Control but on a more modest scale, allowing users to explore their journey into IP in a way that works for them.
“Broadcasters and production facilities are under intense pressure to deliver new programming to a changing audience while dealing with increased competition from new services and content platforms,” said Miroslav Jeras, CTO at Pebble. “They’re doing all this while managing their own internal resources as they explore transitioning to an IP infrastructure. Each broadcaster or production facility is at a different point in their journey, so having the ability to implement a small scale system enables them to upskill their teams, gain experience in how to build and operate these technologies, and test new ways of working.”
Pebble Control offers IP connection management at any scale without the need to deploy a bespoke enterprise solution. It leverages full support for the NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications) suite of protocols – produced by the Advanced Media Workflow Association to facilitate networked media for professional applications – and operates on web-based UIs. Designed to deliver immediate benefits to even the smallest IP facility, it interfaces with NMOS-enabled devices from multiple vendors on the network and is easily reconfigurable for when interconnections change or when devices are added or removed, essentially providing plug and play capability for IP networks. This new version, Pebble Control Free, allows users to seamlessly leverage interoperability in an IP world. They can test the waters and explore how easy it really is to manage and connect IP devices using the resources available on Pebble’s new self-service portal.
Alison Pavitt, Director of Sales and Marketing at Pebble commented: “Pebble has long championed the importance of open standards and Pebble Control Free is set to drive collaboration across the industry. Available free of charge to end users and vendors alike, it fills an important gap in the technology stack and makes IP connectivity as simple as SDI. As a successful specialist vendor with 22 years’ experience of listening to what the market needs, we’re happy to be giving back with this important tool which democratises access to IP and is set to drive collaboration across the industry.”
For more information and to download the software, visit www.pebble.tv/control-free
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Following completion of the AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) for its Virtualised Playout Solution, Pebble accelerates its engagement with the AWS community to promote cloud solutions to its global customer base.
Weybridge, Surrey, UK , 13th April 2022: Pebble, a leading automation, content management, and integrated channel specialist, is delighted to announce it has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) and completed the cloud provider’s Foundational Technical Review (FTR) program for its Virtualised Playout solution.
Pebble will leverage its AWS Partner status and AWS FTR certification to work closely with the AWS community, identifying new customer-focused solutions that follow AWS best practices for scalable cloud workflows, security, performance, and operational efficiency.
Peter Mayhead, Chief Executive Officer at Pebble said: “More and more broadcasters are navigating the best route to leveraging cloud solutions that are suited to their operations both practically and financially. And to do this they need a technology partner they can trust. I’m incredibly proud of the efforts made by the teams at Pebble for having passed such a rigorous process to successfully complete the AWS Foundational Technical Review and achieve AWS Partner status. This success shows our growing customer base that we are certified experts in our field and committed to delivering cloud solutions that will work for them.”
The Pebble Virtualised Playout Solution is a software-defined virtualised IP channel with a flexible channel pipeline design. The benefits of virtualised playout include the agility to launch and decommission channels for short-term requirements, and the ability to host an operational infrastructure within a standard data centre environment.
As a software-only implementation of Pebble’s Integrated Channel device, the Virtualised Playout solution is configurable to meet the exact requirements of each of the channels a customer needs to play out. It is designed to meet the needs of service providers, multi-channel operators, sports broadcasters, and corporate users looking to virtualise their operations.
“While the future of media playout and control is clearly headed toward the cloud, not all organisations are ready to fully move away from their on-premises, legacy-based infrastructures,” said Daniel Robinson, Head of R&D at Pebble. “By working with the AWS community, we will greatly enhance our ability to develop and customise cloud solutions for broadcasters, and we can especially cater for those who are not ready to make the leap to full cloud playout, offering hybrid solutions that will allow them to migrate at a pace that makes the most sense for the long-term success of their operations.”
Pebble is also now an AWS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) joining that customer-centric community to extend the reach of AWS and provide customers with expanded workflow options.
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Pebble has revealed the appointment of Besco as its newest channel partner based in South Korea. Find out more in this piece written in the Spring 2022 Issue of FEED Magazine HERE.