The iPad: just a sexy consumer toy? Not to Concise Media Design, which recognises its enormous creative and business potential for conferences.

Concise designs and produces content for screens at live events, from websites to interactive touch screens to large format projection. A year ago the company hit on an idea to deliver a complete tablet-based solution for conferences.

Phil O'Brien, Director, Concise, explains: "We build branded, dynamic apps for conferences, and give every delegate an iPad so they can view presentations, vote, browse the agenda and speaker biographies, take notes, play quizzes, bid, message each other and complete a feedback form. It's simple and they love it."

Concise offers a fully managed service, from building the apps (in multiple languages if required), iPad hire, controlling every tablet centrally on site and providing support.

The service immediately attracted some big-name companies, including Sky and HSBC, and the growing demand meant that Concise needed to invest in more equipment.

"We had worked with Fineline a few years ago, so we approached them to help us finance additional iPads" says Phil. "Simon Curlew built a great relationship with us in a very short time and provided exceptional customer service."

And what of Concise's future plans? "We'll definitely be buying more iPads, as we've seen enormous demand both here in the UK and from our Hong Kong and New York offices," says Phil.

www.concisegroup.com

The recession has bitten almost every company at every strata of the industry, but even when finding funds for investment is hard, new technology purchases might be just the ticket to keep business ticking over.

That was the situation faced by prospective customers of Snell's Alchemist Ph.C-HD motion compensated standards converter who were gifted an innovative free interest repayment package, which enabled all sides to do business.

"These small to medium sized post production facilities wanted to buy directly from us, rather than from a reseller," explains Snell Sales Manager, Ian Ellis. "The Alchemist Ph.C-HD is a sophisticated product and they wanted to be close to us in order to access our level of expertise."

Handling smaller companies in a direct sale can be tricky for manufacturers, though they clearly don't want to turn the business away. Simply because of the size of turnover they pose a credit risk and cashflow can also be problematic.

"By partnering with Fineline we devised a strategy that effectively greenlit these deals," says Ellis. "It gave the post guys the flexibility to make the investments fit with their business needs and in several cases the interest free saving, over two or three years, was a significant factor in helping them decide to place the order.

"We were reassured that there was a source in place for the facilities to pay for the units at the end of the day. If you're selling a £100,000 box you can't just ship it and assume you are going to be paid. This option removes the risk about credit and makes it easier for us to do business with smaller companies."

Although the package has been underwritten for the Alchemist a similar arrangement could be made for the Archangel Ph.C – HD real-time video restoration system.

"Fineline has a thorough understanding of Snell's market and equipment," adds Ellis. "We've worked with them over a number of years and we value their agility. If I need to run some numbers by them I can have a good dialogue with them at any time of day. The bottom line is that Fineline enabled us to do business."

www.snellgroup.com

New technology demands new services, and Digit Content Services is one of the new breed of companies that have been set up to provide them.

"We are a specialist encoding studio," explains co-director, Daniel Gould. "We digitise, manage, and deliver our partners' media content for digital platforms in a high quality and secure manner."

Digit is a boutique company, and since its inception in June last year has gathered some major clients, including BT and the BBC. "Our competitors offer similar services to us, but as a bolt-on and not a core component of their business," says Gould. "And to be really good at navigating and keeping up with all the digital formats out there requires some specialisation. We deliver content to multiple platforms, individually tailored and ready to go, so we take the headache out of the process for content owners and any platforms that want to outsource."

The company has just bought additional Sony VTRs though Fineline to increase its ingest capacity and Gould and Digit have further ambitions too. "We've been looking for a long-term financial partner," he says. "We all hear stories about how the government wants to ensure businesses have access to funding, but it's not easy. And as we look to grow the company in the future, it's good to have a firm relationship with Fineline established."

www.studiodigit.co.uk

Allowing different facets of the entertainment industry to work together seamlessly

Dave Scammell, Sohonet's CEO comes straight to the point, "Sohonet is the first and largest high-bandwidth connector for the global entertainments industry, providing the world's surest path for transferring digital content."

With a global network of ultra-high-speed connectivity allowing data to be transferred anywhere in the world at Gigabit speed, subscribers on the system already include Warner Bros, Universal, HBO, and Pinewood and Shepperton Studios (UK) among many others.

Dave continues,"Sohonet delivers the connectivity that allows the many different facets of the entertainment industry to work together seamlessly, wherever they happen to be in the world. Co-operative working means having access to the best technicians and technologies in the world without leaving your desk.

However, our success, and the rapid take up of our services, placed increased pressure on our infrastructure. We needed to install new Foundry Networks routers to meet the demand. This was a significant investment, I contacted Gareth Wilding at Fineline as they have been integral to the media industry for many years and their continued sponsorship and support of trade body UK Post & Services stood them out from the rest."

Ken Cheng, Vice President, Foundry Networks explains, "We were delighted to be involved in this project and provide Sohonet with the kind of high capacity metro network that is needed in the media industry. The NetIron MLX routers give them the network capability to handle large volumes of graphics and data traffic enabling the company's media clients to share films and images quickly and easily, whilst providing superior quality of service.

High-performance networks are vital to ensure a high-quality experience for users of next generation applications. A common infrastructure can be used for the delivery of multiple services or applications, lowering capital costs and ongoing operational costs significantly."

Gareth adds, "Our job is not just to provide finance. We do our best to take away as much bureaucracy and administration as possible so that our clients can get on with their jobs. In this case the equipment was arriving by shipping agents from the US so we had to deal with VAT payments to release goods from bond. This all had to take place on the last working day before Christmas so that the equipment was released in time for Sohonet to install during their only available downtime between Christmas and New Year. It was close but we made it!"

Dave has the last word, "Sohonet provides the infrastructure to enable studios to easily accommodate the 'next generation' of content creation and digital workflow technologies. Fineline helped to make this happen without us having to seek out major investment."

www.sohonet.co.uk