OTTera cuts scheduling time by 60% with AI on Amazon Bedrock

By: Venky Hosur, Sr. Partner Solutions Architect – AWS
By: Ed Ip, Principal Solutions Architect – AI/R Compass UOL
By: Elizabeth Burton, Head of Marketing, North America – AI/R Compass UOL

OTTera is a white-label streaming service powering more than 2,000 FAST channels worldwide. By replacing a manual, rules-based process with AI on Amazon Bedrock, OTTera cut schedule creation time by 60%. Partnering with AI/R Compass UOL and AWS, OTTera built an AI-driven decision engine powered by Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Athena, and Amazon Redshift. Beyond speed, the transformation delivered more than $6.3 million* in projected Year 1 net profit and a scalable model for turning proprietary data into real-time business decisions.

The business impact

For media and streaming companies, scheduling decisions directly influence audience retention, advertising yield, and content monetization. As content libraries grow and viewer preferences shift in real time, relying on manual processes and historical analysis alone can limit revenue potential and slow decision-making. With AI-driven scheduling, organizations can continuously evaluate performance data, audience behavior, and programming options to make smarter, faster decisions at scale. With proprietary data turned into actionable insights, you can optimize engagement, improve profitability, and create more personalized viewing experiences. More importantly, you can transform scheduling from an operational task into a strategic advantage, using data-driven decision-making to differentiate your services and compete more effectively in an increasingly crowded streaming landscape.

The challenge

OTTera’s core scheduling tool sits at the center of its ad-supported streaming business. Hundreds of streaming networks with thousands of channels rely on OTTera to build programming schedules that directly influence audience engagement, content performance, and advertising revenue. Two critical challenges limited OTTera’s ability to scale. First, the scheduling workflow was highly engineering-dependent, requiring technical expertise for routine scheduling and optimization tasks. This created operational bottlenecks that slowed the pace of schedule changes and made it difficult for network operators to react quickly to changing audience behavior or monetization opportunities. Second, valuable insights across content performance, audience engagement, and advertising revenue were fragmented across multiple systems, preventing network operators from using that data to make intelligent scheduling decisions. These constraints slowed OTTera’s ability to deliver features that would help network operators react to shifting viewer patterns and transform historical data into actionable decisions.

This led to reduced revenue optimization opportunities and slower innovation across OTTera’s networks. OTTera had already taken a first step toward addressing this with an AI Server built on Amazon Bedrock. However, its use was limited to a small set of basic, fixed-prompt scheduling tasks. OTTera needed a broader solution – one that would remove the engineering dependency limiting day-to-day scheduling, unify its fragmented data assets, and use AI to automate and optimize scheduling decisions in real time, turning its data estate into a strategic differentiator and a new source of growth for both OTTera and its networks.

Solution overview

To help OTTera scale and unlock growth, AI/R Compass UOL executed a phased AWS transformation that modernized the system, enhanced monetization, and embedded AI into scheduling.

• Phase 1: Modernized the scheduling tool, giving operators self-service control and alleviating engineering bottlenecks.
• Phase 2: Enriched advertising metadata and integrated programmatic ad systems to monetize inventory.
• Phase 3: Identified and prioritized scheduling use cases with the highest business impact.
• Phase 4: Validated top use cases via proof of concept on Amazon Bedrock, confirming feasibility and value.
• Phase 5: Deployed AI agents powered by Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, supported by Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue, and Amazon Athena to deliver intelligent scheduling recommendations at scale.

With this architecture, OTTera can turn its data into a strategic asset — making faster decisions, delivering better programming, and increasing monetization.

“AI/R Compass UOL helped us level up our scheduler, taking it from an operational challenge to a strategic tool. Our team and clients can now make faster, more informed programming decisions, improving audience engagement, channel quality and performance, and revenue.”
– Craig McEldowney, CTO & Co-Founder, OTTera

How it works

AI/R Compass UOL built an AI-powered scheduling tool on AWS that replaces manual planning with conversation-driven automation. Operators type natural-language requests — like “optimize prime-time for sports” — and the system applies business rules, evaluates options using machine learning, and returns ranked recommendations with clear explanations. Schedules that took hours now publish in minutes.

The system spans three AWS layers:

• Request handling: Requests are authenticated via Amazon Cognito, authorized and routed through Amazon API Gateway, processed by AWS Lambda, and persisted in Amazon DynamoDB.
• AI decision-making: Amazon Bedrock AgentCore orchestrates Anthropic’s Claude model to interpret requests, maintain context, and retrieve content from a knowledge base powered by Amazon OpenSearch Service.
• Data and ML pipeline: Amazon EventBridge, AWS Step Functions, AWS Glue, and Amazon SageMaker AI process audience and revenue data, stored in Amazon S3 and queried via Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift.

These layers turn OTTera’s data into scheduling intelligence delivered at scale.

Figure 1 — OTTera AI-driven scheduling architecture on AWS

Results

The transformation delivered measurable business impact for OTTera and its network customers, turning a manual, engineering-dependent scheduling process into an AI system running on AWS. Schedule creation time decreased by 60%, allowing networks to respond more quickly to audience trends and programming opportunities. AI-driven scheduling is also projected to increase viewer engagement by 15—25%*, helping OTTera’s customers deliver more relevant content experiences and improve monetization outcomes.

The business impact is equally significant, with projected Year 1 net profit exceeding $6.3 million*. Today, OTTera is running production AI agents that make revenue optimization decisions for live streaming content viewed by millions of consumers, transforming scheduling from a manual workflow into an intelligent, data-driven revenue system. The following table shows the impact of AI-driven scheduling.

* Based on OTTera’s internal estimates and performance modeling, 2026. Individual results may vary based on content library size, audience scale, and market conditions.

Table 1 — Impact of AI-driven scheduling

Key takeaways

1. Modernize first, then operationalize AI. Organizations achieve faster and more sustainable results when AI is built on a modern, scalable technology foundation.
2. Data quality determines AI value. A unified, accessible, and real-time data layer is the prerequisite for reliable AI-powered decision-making.
3. Start with business value, not technology. Prioritize and validate high-impact use cases before scaling to make sure investments align with measurable outcomes.
4. Embed AI where decisions drive results. The most successful AI initiatives move beyond productivity gains to improve revenue, customer experience, and operational performance.

Conclusion

OTTera’s journey demonstrates that realizing AI’s full potential requires more than deploying models—it requires the right foundation, the right data strategy, and a clear path to production. For organizations looking to unlock greater value from proprietary data, the key is to apply AI where it can directly impact revenue growth, customer experience, and operational performance. By modernizing core systems, creating a trusted data foundation, and scaling proven use cases, you can move beyond AI experimentation. That foundation is what delivers measurable business outcomes at scale. OTTera’s success provides a practical blueprint for transforming AI from a technology initiative into a competitive advantage.

AI/R Compass UOL – AWS Partner Spotlight

AI/R Compass UOL is a subsidiary of the AI Revolution Company, and an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner specializing in AI transformation, cloud modernization, and data-driven innovation. With 12 AWS Competencies, AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) designation, more than 1,900 AWS certifications, and hundreds of successful customer launches, AI/R Compass UOL helps organizations accelerate their journey from proof of concept to production. AI/R Compass UOL combines deep industry expertise with AWS technologies to help you modernize applications, operationalize AI, optimize business processes, and achieve measurable business outcomes at scale.

Contact AI/R Compass UOL | Partner Overview | AWS Marketplace