David Sugg has spent 26 years building and operating media supply chains at major studios. He's led large technology programs, managed teams of hundreds, and learned most of what matters by being in the room when things went wrong. He now consults on technology implementations, supply chain strategy, and operations, with a particular focus on how technology actually performs in production environments.
On the surface, a model does not look like a supplier, it looks like software. It is licensed, it has an API, and it sits in the stack next to the transcoder and the asset management system. But what makes something a supplier is not how it is purchased. A supplier is an outside party whose work goes into your deliverable, on terms the supplier controls. The test turns on what the work is, not on what the technology is. The same model is software when it summarizes your ticket queue and a supplier when its output is deliverable subtitles or dubbing. Software is bought against a specifica…
