Sony appoints Stuart Almond to lead new European Intelligent Media Services team

The Japanese multinational Intelligent Media Services (IMS) creates a new division dedicated to the development of solutions and services with a new management team and a greater focus on Europe.

Sony has launched a new division, Intelligent Media Services (IMS), dedicated to the continued acceleration of Sony's solutions and services offering in Europe.

Directed by Stuart Almond Having been actively involved in developing Sony Professional's portfolio of IT workflow solutions products and services over the past four years, the new IMS team will enhance the transformation of the company's solutions business. The new IMS team will be focused on innovative services, combined with its consulting experience, and will drive the transformation of communications companies in the media and entertainment sector in Europe.

It is the latest strategic initiative in Sony's continued growth and dedication to its service offering, reinforcing its drive to provide complete solutions to meet the needs of its customers.

Introduced at IBC 2018, Sony IMSs offer a variety of solutions designed to transform traditional multimedia supply chains and unlock the value of customer content.

Thanks to the use of its news production services and platforms, such as XDCAM air y Media Backbone HiveIn addition to the addition of cloud-native virtualized production environments and content distribution solutions and OTT services, multimedia customers will benefit from the combined portfolio of Sony Professional solutions, giving them the scale, flexibility and performance necessary for a more agile production and distribution environment.

Speaking about the importance of the European approach to IMS, Adam Fry, Vice President of Sony Professional Solutions Europe, says: "We have been very transparent about our ambitions to expand the capacity of our services and are making great strides to realize this approach. Today's announcement is another example to see in practice. We are focused on delivering comprehensive, integrated technologies and services across the content value chain that enable multimedia companies to thrive within the future landscape of this rapidly evolving industry."

As part of the global initiative, IMS will provide new and existing services, as well as microservices, to media companies, allowing them to create, control, connect and deliver content anytime, anywhere through an unprecedented variety of distribution platforms. To lead the expansion of IMS in Europe, Stuart Almond will continue to develop the IMS offering and will have a large team of experts in customer engagement, product management, pre-sales, workflows, architecture and marketing.

Stuart Almond highlights that "our mission is to empower multimedia companies to revolutionize their industry in the post-digital era, and our IMS are perfect for achieving this. With IMS, we focus on the business needs of our clients, creating revolutionary technologies that provide ROI and enable new and exciting ways to deliver deeper audience engagement, as well as partnering with our clients over the long term to create new, sustainable audiences."