An Interview with Margaret Craig, CE0, on Signiant Acquiring LessPain Software

This week, Signiant announced that it had acquired Lesspain Software, best known for its media asset management software “Kyno.”

This acquisition has significant potential for media creators, so, to learn more, I emailed questions to Margaret Craig, CEO of Signiant. Here’s our interview.

NOTE: Margaret’s answers are unedited.

Larry Jordan: What does Signiant do?

Margaret Craig: Signiant’s enterprise software provides people and systems with fast, reliable, secure global access to valuable media assets ⎯ regardless of storage type or location. Our cloud-native Software Defined Content Exchange (SDCX) SaaS platform anchors the next-generation media technology stack, optimizing content flow within and between more than 50,000 media companies of all sizes. From content creation through distribution, Signiant plays a mission-critical role in file-based workflows and cloud upload/download across the media supply chain. For more information, please visit http://www.signiant.com.

Larry: What did Signiant acquire?

Margaret: Signiant acquired Lesspain Software, a German provider of embedded media processing software and the desktop application Kyno. Lesspain’s talent and technology will be used to extend the functionality of Signiant’s market-leading Software Defined Content Exchange (SDCX) SaaS platform, adding powerful tools for interaction with media assets.

Larry: Why is Signiant interested in Lesspain – what challenges are you hoping to address?

Margaret: Customers are looking to Signiant to facilitate organizing, finding, and interacting with their media assets in various value-add ways. These capabilities require enrichment of our platform’s metadata and proxy framework, areas where the Lesspain team will contribute both skills and code.

Larry: What is the Signiant SDCX (Software Defined Content Exchange) platform?

Margaret: SDCX is a term we use to describe our unique SaaS architecture.

Here’s a bit more on the architecture and how it works:

Signiant’s SDCX SaaS platform is made up of two distinct system components,
a control plane and a data plane. In simple terms, the control plane handles
metadata while the data plane deals with media essence.

The control plane is the brain. This is where technical administrators and media
professionals interact with the system through various web interfaces. Control
plane operations include access control, transfer orchestration, reporting, alerts, and the brokering of inter-company content exchange, as well as user operations such as finding, playing and transferring media assets. The control plane also generates transfer-related metadata, such as chain of custody information, and allows for the input of metadata by users.

The data plane of the SDCX platform deals with the media assets themselves,
and this is where our transport protocol comes into play. This part of the
system provides fast, secure, and reliable access to and movement of media
assets regardless of storage location. Signiant never takes custody of the assets themselves. Content storage, whether file or object, on-prem or in the cloud, always remains under the customer’s control.

Larry: What are your plans on integrating it with existing Signiant technology; in other words, what new stuff are you hoping to do?

Margaret: Look for specific announcements in the coming months but, in general, customers are looking to Signiant to facilitate organizing, finding, and interacting with their media assets in various value-add ways. These capabilities require enrichment of our platform’s metadata and proxy framework, areas where the Lesspain team will contribute both skills and code.

Larry: What happens to Kyno, Lesspain’s stand-alone software?

Margaret: The focus of this acquisition is expanding Signiant’s SaaS platform. However, the Kyno application will remain available to the market.

Larry: As well, what happens to the Lesspain development team?

Margaret: We are excited to welcome them to the Signiant team. They will be based in Germany but work with our core development team which is in Ottawa.

Larry: If Kyno is going away, what should existing users do?

Margaret: The focus of this acquisition is expanding Signiant’s SaaS platform. However, the Kyno application will remain available to the market.

Larry: Signiant has a well-established reputation, especially with larger shops, studios and enterprises. What are the benefits to smaller production houses or free-lancers?

Margaret: Signiant software is used by more than 50,000 media companies of all sizes. Media Shuttle was launched in 2012 leading the media technology industry into the world of SaaS. It is used by the largest media companies in the world as well as thousands of smaller post production houses and everyone in between. There are nearly 1MM users on Media Shuttle today who transfer more than 1 billion files per year. In 2019, we introduced Signiant Jet, our most recent SaaS product on the SDCX platform, which made automated content exchange accessible to companies of all sizes. Jet is an easy, cost-effective way for large companies to set-up automated exchange with their smaller partners.

Larry: Big companies acquire smaller companies all the time. What makes this significant to media creators?

Margaret: There are several consolidators in the media technology space focused on aggregating the revenue of legacy hardware and software companies. We aren’t looking to replicate that kind of roll-up model. Instead, Signiant is executing a true platform strategy by targeting software companies with complementary functionality that can be transformed into cloud-native SaaS. We’re operating the industry’s preeminent SaaS platform at scale, and we have built SaaS-centric operational infrastructure across every functional area of the company. Through adjacent acquisitions, these investments can now be leveraged to deliver the media-centric capabilities that our customers are clamoring for ⎯ all on a unified software platform

Larry adds: Thanks, Margaret, for taking the time to explain your thinking.

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