Ross Celebrates Fifteen Years of openGear – Putting Customers First

Ottawa, Canada, June 11^th 2021 – Ross recently marked the fifteenth birthday of the openGear platform, created in 2006 and the winner of a Technical Emmy® award in 2017. Initially conceived as a universal solution to remove customer uncertainty around the interoperability of signal processing cards from different manufacturers, openGear has now become its own standard, with approximately one hundred and thirty partners all following the openGear blueprint.

“Ross has a celebrated Code of Ethics, and one of the entries states that Ross will always act in the customer’s best interest,” notes Eric Goodmurphy, Head of Ross Video’s Infrastructure team for many years.  “As a platform, openGear was created with that thought top of mind. We wanted to create something that would be free and openly available, and which would directly address this problem our customers were having. It just made sense – why have all these different card and chassis formats when it could be standardized and help make all our lives easier?” While it sounds simple, Goodmurphy recalls a degree of skepticism in the early days. “I think some manufacturers assumed we had some kind of trick up our sleeve and were trying to tie everyone into something that would be hard to get out of, but there really was no hidden agenda; this was all about putting customers first by removing confusion.”

Fast-forward to 2021, and openGear has been even more successful than initially hoped – countless happy customers, four industry awards, over forty thousand frames delivered and a vibrant network of partner companies all developing new and innovative solutions. From SD to 4K UHD video, digital audio, IRD’s, IP and fiber, openGear supports a wide array of solutions that, we’re proud to say, gives customers the freedom to choose the best options for individual needs and budgets.

Looking ahead, Bill Rounopoulos, Business Development Manager – OEM Partnerships, is excited. “The future for openGear looks brighter than ever. Users will continue to benefit from the innovation unleashed by over 130 partners developing openGear solutions, and the pace of this innovation will only accelerate as more partners join the ecosystem every year. This will give users the freedom to choose the very best openGear solutions to meet their needs, solve their challenges and fit their budgets, all managed from one powerful control system: DashBoard. As technology evolves, users can trust openGear will evolve to address their future challenges, while still being backward compatible to protect their investment.”

To learn more about openGear, please click here. To watch Eric Goodmurphy discuss the past, present and future of the platform, please click here to watch Ross Live 2021 Episode Two on-demand.