Verizon Digital Media Services Hires Fox Networks’ Ariff Sidi as Chief Product Officer

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Verizon Digital Media Services recruited Ariff Sidi, formerly Fox Networks Group’s SVP of digital products and platforms, to be its new chief product officer.

At VDMS, which is part of ’s Oath division, Sidi will oversee the global product portfolio of live-streaming and video-on-demand delivery, monitoring and content delivery network services for broadcasters and content providers. Based in L.A., Sidi reports directly to Ralf Jacob, Oath’s head of digital media services.

Sidi replaces former CPO Ted Middleton, who left Verizon in April to join Amazon Web Services as senior principal product manager for edge services.

“With more than 15 years of digital media, streaming and platform development experience, Ariff will provide a product vision that expands our services portfolio to anticipate and meet the digital media needs of the future,” Jacob said in a statement.

Sidi previously worked with Verizon Digital Media Services as a customer, when he headed Fox Networks’ digital products and platforms. “With my first-hand experience as a customer, I know that Verizon Digital Media Services has the most sophisticated IP video and content-delivery platform available,” Sidi commented.

Other VDMS customers include ABC, the BBC, CBS, CNN, Discovery, Disney/ESPN, E!, HBO, Hearst Television, Lionsgate, Major League Baseball, MTV, NBCUniversal, Showtime, Turner, Viacom, Warner Bros. Pictures, and the Weather Channel.

At Fox Network Groups, Sidi helped create the strategy for Fox’s aggregated TV Everywhere product, which combines all Fox television networks into a single user experience. He also managed the engineering and product team that built Fox Broadcasting’s national primetime live-streaming product.

Before joining Fox, Sidi held executive roles at Disney’s EMEA division, Disney/ABC Television Group and Disney Interactive Media Group, along with other technology companies and startups. Sidi has also authored several patents and was part of the team that won a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for Disney/ABC Television Group’s ABC.com Full Episode Player.

The Verizon Digital Media Services network that has over 125 points of presence on six continents. Competitors include Akamai Technologies, Amazon Web Services’ CloudFront, Google Cloud, and CloudFlare.