Five years ago this week… WarnerMedia (a year before morphing into WBD) was among the loudest voices arguing that microservices would reshape media workflows—promising Lego-like flexibility, best-of-breed ecosystems, and an end to monolithic vendor lock-in. Fast forward to today, and much of that vision has materialized. Microservices did not decimate vendor ecosystems as feared, but did force suppliers to modularize offerings and play nicer with others. Standards bodies like SMPTE made progress, though not at the pace optimists predicted, leaving pockets of fragmentation. 2021-era predictions were most prescient in the convergence with AI. Software-defined workflows making decisions mid-process (once dismissed as “science fiction”) are now part of real deployments, as AI/ML orchestrates content processing and distribution. Orange identifies Globecast…