Grass Valley Realigns Global Organizations to Support Continued Growth in its Digital Content Creation, Delivery Businesses
Paris/Burbank, Calif., August 28, 2006 - In support of continued growth in demand for its key digital content creation and delivery solutions, Grass Valley, a business within Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) today announced a series of realignments that strengthen its global marketing, and research and development organizations, and that foster more communication and responsiveness to customers.
"We saw remarkable growth in the first half of 2006, and are continuing to see it in terms of demand for our content-creation systems for HD and multi-format production as well as digital products and systems for cable head-ends and the emerging mobile and IP-based distribution markets," said Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business.
"The product development and sales structures we're putting into place will better support customers in their adoption of our leading-edge content creation and delivery systems," said Valentin. "We are ensuring a direct line between our senior management team and our customers, better proximity between our sales teams and our customers on the local level, and accelerating delivery of the solutions these media leaders and video professionals are demanding."
Keeping Pace with a Growing Customer Base
In alignment with the rapid change which global professional video customers are undertaking to optimize their operations in the face of more competitive media environments, Grass Valley is realigning its product lines under four profit centers.
The Production and Post-Production and Play-out & Editing Systems profit centers will address the market for content creation systems. Jan Eveleens will head the Production and Post-Production profit center, which is responsible for cameras, switchers, integrated production solutions, and solutions for digital intermediate and post production. Hiroshi Yamada will head the Play-out & Editing profit center which is responsible for servers and digital news production, as well as the desktop video editing and professional video solutions added to the Grass Valley product portfolio through the recent Canopus® acquisition
The Video Networks Solutions profit center will meet the rapidly expanding demands for MPEG-4 HD compression and video network signal management requirements for head-end environments, as well as solutions for emerging mobile and IP-based distribution markets. This organization, led by Christophe Delahousse, is responsible for a variety of network tools and applications as well as routers, modular, compression, and transport and network-processing products.
The Integration & Transmission Solutions profit center will provide end-to-end systems and design and support services for DVB-T and DVB-H broadcasters. Led by Patrick Montliaud, it will also manage an extensive television and radio transmission portfolio
To strengthen and improve the overall marketing activities, better drive the technology direction, and to leverage strong synergies across the Grass Valley profit centers, Jeff Rosica will head up an expanded global Grass Valley Marketing & Technology organization.
Rainer Sturm will be responsible for enhancing processes and quality support across the Grass Valley organization.
Focus and Commitment to Customer Base
The new organization announced today is also structured to foster more communication and improve responsiveness between Grass Valley management and its customers.
In this regard, the following individuals from the management team, in addition to their other roles, will take direct responsibility for Sales organizations within their respective locations: Jeff Rosica in North America, Hiroshi Yamada in Japan, and Patrick Montliaud for Europe and the rest of the world. Olivier Lafaye will coordinate key account management in Asia-Pacific.
About Thomson - World leader in digital video technologies
Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) provides technology, services, and systems to help its Media & Entertainment clients - content creators, content distributors and users of its technology - realize their business goals and optimize their performance in a rapidly changing technology environment. The Group is the preferred partner to the Media & Entertainment Industries through its Technicolor, Grass Valley, RCA, and Thomson brands. For more information: www.thomson.net.
Thomson's Systems division develops video and film technologies, products and services sold to all major Hollywood studios, all major television, satellite, and cable broadcasters under the Grass Valley brand-name for the delivery of analog and digital entertainment. The division also includes the Thomson Premises Systems Business Unit, which provides IP, satellite, cable and terrestrial premises systems as well as consumer networks systems, and the Network Intelligence Solutions organization, which develops software solutions for network operators.
For information about Grass Valley products from Thomson please visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.
