Why the Cloud Matters for the Media and Entertainment Industry
By Adam Noyes
Cloud Computing has become a bigger and bigger feature in any video post production workflow. Avid has improved cloud based editing significantly for their editors in the entertainment industry.
Check out some highlights from this article from avidblogs.com to learn more.
Cloud computing has dominated the IT conversation for many years now, but the media and entertainment industry has lagged behind. While the past few years have seen a handful of innovators migrating certain workflows to the cloud, it took a disaster on the scale of the global coronavirus pandemic for the broader industry to seriously consider what cloud solutions could do for media production.
While the impetus to move to the cloud may be a scary one, there’s never been a better time for media enterprises to investigate cloud-based workflows. Even after the current crisis passes, cloud-enabled media enterprises will benefit from increased agility and efficiency.
Cloud Enables Media Enterprises to Work Efficiently
To succeed in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, media enterprises need to focus more of their resources on creating and monetizing content, and less of their resources on managing infrastructure. For media enterprises, cloud architectures offer the promise of infrastructure that is more flexible, agile, and self-managing.
Although workflows have become increasingly streamlined, demands for even greater efficiency have presented new challenges for content creators. In a case of the tail wagging the dog, the demand by consumers for content on any device, distributed across any network, puts pressure on content producers and distributors to deliver more finished products to these consumers. In response, they are ramping up workflows, investing in applications and relevant infrastructure simply to meet demand. However, this may not be the most pragmatic approach, nor the most cost-efficient.
How the Cloud Works for Media Enterprises
Migrating from a traditional on-premises solution to a cloud-based platform can help address the need for agility and economy. At its most basic level, the cloud provides a more cost-effective platform for fulfilling unpredictable spikes in demand. At a more strategic level, the cloud provides a platform for aligning the needs of both creative and business teams.
In the cloud, virtualized applications and servers become resource pools that can be dynamically reconfigured and provisioned as needs change. Imagine allocating resources to address ingest of source material during the day, then re-allocating those same resources to do transcoding or rendering in the evening.