Hanno Basse, former chief technology officer of 20th Century Fox Film, has landed at Microsoft’s Azure, where he’s the tech company’s liaison to the media and entertainment industry.
Basse, who joined Microsoft last month, is CTO of Azure Media and Entertainment. Based in L.A., his charter is to work with Hollywood studios, television networks and other content producers to help them gain efficiencies and flexibility by moving production, post-production and distribution functions into the cloud.
In the role, Basse reports to Tad Brockway, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Microsoft Azure Storage, Media, and Edge.
Basse spent seven years at 20th Century Fox Film, responsible for technology strategy for the film studio, covering production/post-production, theatrical distribution and home entertainment. He formed partnerships with vendors including Samsung, Ericsson and Barco, which led to the founding of the Fox Innovation Lab. While at Fox, he also served as the first chairman of the UHD Alliance where he helped launch the 4K-UHD Blu-ray Disc format and, in partnership with Samsung, established High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology as a consumer product. He also served as the Fox board member of MovieLabs.
In March 2019, he was laid off as from 20th Century Fox Film after Disney’s acquisition of the studio. After leaving Fox, he briefly served as president of media infrastructure company Live Planet’s decentralized media solutions division.
Prior to joining 20th Century Fox in 2012, Basse was at DirecTV as senior VP of broadcast systems engineering. In that role, he oversaw the satellite operator’s broadcast infrastructure and served as the technical lead for the introduction of technologies like HD, 3D and on-demand to DirecTV’s platform. He also worked as a systems engineer at ProSieben Media, and began his career in 1991 as a scientist-engineer at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in Munich, Germany.
Currently, Basse serves as a board director of Live Planet and is on the advisory board of Vionlabs AB. In early 2019, he was appointed chairman of the Infinity Festival. He has been awarded 28 patents and in 2014 was named a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). Basse is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Basse studied radio communications technology at the Engineering College of the Soviet Air Defense Forces in Kiev, Ukraine, and received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Officer’s College of the Air Force in Kamenz, Germany.