IABM Media Tech Trends. Cloud

Transcription

1 IABM Media Tech Trends Cloud

2 Media Tech Trends About this Report IABM Media Tech Trends reports track the adoption of speci c emerging technologies within the broadcast and media sector. The purpose of these reports is to enable member companies to better understand the drivers of emerging technologies adoption within customer organizations. This should provide member companies more tools to better address the challenges lying ahead, from new product development to marketing strategy. Contents This edition of the report focuses on cloud and covers the following topics: - Cloud Essentials - Cloud Adoption Tracker - Cloud Use Cases in Media

3 Cloud Essentials What is it? Cloud technology can be de ned as a type of computing enabling users to access a variety of IT-based services via the Internet. Cloud-based technology is often classi ed on the basis of infrastructure ownership (Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud). There is also a further classi cation of cloud technology based on the type of service offered (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS). Cloud computing has gradually evolved over the years, starting with mainframe computing in the 1950s. The 1970s saw the concept of virtual machines created with IBM releasing an operating system called VM. The 1990s saw telecommunications companies expand their offering of single dedicated point-to-point data connections to start offering virtualized private network connections. In 1999, Salesforce.com became one of the rst movers into the cloud arena with the idea of using the internet to enable end users to access software programs remotely via a browser. In 2002, Amazon introduced its web-based retail services. In 2006, Amazon launched AWS, giving birth to the thriving cloud computing services market.

4 Cloud Essentials Ownership Models Public Cloud: In this model, cloud service providers (e.g. AWS, MS Azure, Google Cloud) own the underlying infrastructure and are responsible for the maintenance and security of the cloud environment the customer/ organization has no physical control of these. Public cloud deployments guarantee more exibility/ scalability at the expense of less control for customization to suit industry-speci c needs. They are generally considered more suited to applications that have intermittent and unpredictable usage dynamic or bursty workloads. The economies of scale enjoyed by public cloud providers allow them to achieve high technology utilization rates that would not be achievable by single media organizations. Private Cloud: In this model, the infrastructure is owned by the media organization although its daily management can be carried out by an external provider. If this is not the case, all management, maintenance and updating of data centers also need to be managed by the organization. The private cloud may reside on-premise or off-premise depending on the organization s preferences the hosted data is generally protected by a rewall. Private cloud deployments are less exible/ scalable compared to public cloud deployments but guarantee the user greater control to suit its industry-speci c needs.

5 Cloud Essentials Private cloud deployments are more suited to applications that have regular and predictable usage although it is very dif cult to establish at which usage point a private cloud can be more cost effective than a public cloud. Hybryd Cloud: In this model, a media organization uses both private and public cloud for different applications. Service Models Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provision of computing infrastructure and resources, such as servers, storage and networking. Platform as a Service (PaaS): Provision of a cloud computing environment where users can develop, deliver and manage applications. Software as a Service (SaaS): Provision of cloud-based software, where users access applications on a remote cloud network accessed through the web or an API.

6 Cloud Adoption Tracker % 100% 0 % of companies that have adopted it We are already doing it today Very likely Somewhat likely Unlikely Not at all likely According to IABM data, cloud technology is already at an advanced stage of adoption in broadcast and media as 25% of companies have adopted it - 29% of production/post companies and 27% broadcasters. Below, we show some more stats on cloud deployment preferences as well as a historical analysis of adoption.

7 Cloud Adoption Tracker Deployment Preferences NAB 2014 IBC 2015 NAB 2015 IBC 2016 NAB 2016 IBC 2017 NAB 2017 IBC 2018 NAB Public Cloud Private Cloud (On-Premise) Private Cloud (Off-Premise) % of Adopters % of Non-Adopters Hybrid Cloud From a historical perspective, European end-users have consistently shown to be more inclined to adopt the cloud. Private cloud deployments continue to be preferred across different user categories. Production/Post companies are more eager to use the public cloud.

8 Cloud Adoption Tracker Delivery (file transfer, signal transfer) Content Management (ingest, encoding, workflow orchestration, compliance) Post-Production (editing, dubbing, graphics) Content Distribution & Publishing (linear playout, encryption, VOD/OTT publication) Production Monetization (rights management, advertising sales/traffic, syndication) Most organizations plan to deploy the cloud to delivery work ows - this is consistent across different customer categories. Content management and post-production are the second and third most important areas of application. For broadcasters, distribution is the #2 most important area of application.

9 Cloud Use Cases in Media The emergence of cloud technology in the media & entertainment industry can be traced back to the growth of OTT services such as Net ix in the second decade of the 2000s. Competition from online platforms has triggered a change in requirements at broadcast and media organizations. Media companies have started favoring solutions that guarantee faster deployment of services, greater responsiveness to market shifts and greater scalability of resources. The cloud has emerged as the best answer to these new requirements. Despite its bene ts, the media industry has been relatively slow to adopt cloud-based technology compared to other verticals. Aside from the data-hungry nature of video, media companies have traditionally perceived cloud infrastructure as less secure and, in some cases, not ready for their custom work ows. This is changing as competition from new media platforms intensi es and cloud technology matures. Cloud Bene ts The primary drivers of adoption of cloud technology are increased operational ef ciency and agility. With the help of cloud infrastructures, media organizations can respond more effectively to viewers shifting behavior by deploying new services faster. The cloud enables them to take advantage of new revenue opportunities as well as to utilize resources in a more ef cient way through on-demand provisioning. In a public cloud model, as well as increased resource utilization, the need to manage the underlying infrastructure is also eliminated, liberating talent for creative purposes. Below, we discuss some of the cloud use cases in broadcast and media.

10 Cloud Use Cases in Media Content Sourcing/Delivery At the beginning of the content supply chain, cloud technology has the potential to boost the time-tomarket of new content as well as achieve greater operational ef ciency. The cloud can also ease the ow of content between different organizational functions, streamlining the content supply chain. More ef cient and agile relationships can be established not only between different company functions but also with external stakeholders such as studios and other content suppliers. A relevant example of this is the partnership between Discovery and SDVI to streamline Discovery s content supply chain. In 2015, the broadcaster needed to refresh the way in which it sourced content from its suppliers, moving to a unique standard for le delivery. In fact, Discovery s various regional facilities relied on different standards for sourcing content from suppliers, leading to major obstacles some of them still relied on tape-based work ows. In this project, Discovery s development team built a cloud-based UI to enable its hundreds of suppliers to upload and deliver content to the cloud through Signiant Flight and SigniantTransfer API.

11 Cloud Use Cases in Media By unifying the process of sourcing content from its suppliers, Discovery managed to eliminate obstacles such as metadata inconsistencies. SDVI s Rally was chosen to handle the back-end of this work ow. More speci cally, SDVI Rally automatically checks the les delivered to the cloud repository, transcodes them to adhere to the Discovery facilities le requirements and check them into the local media asset management system. This example shows how cloud-based technology can be deployed to make the process of sourcing content from multiple suppliers more ef cient and automated. The reliance on a mixed pricing model, with on-demand licenses available at times of peak demand, also allowed for greater utilization of resources. What is often disregarded about cloud technology is the possibility to generate more granular data on content and internal operations. This deployment indeed boosted the level of detail of the metadata entered in Discovery s systems as well as providing more tools to measure operational performance. Our business models depend on supplier diversity, but the differences in technical capabilities and experience among suppliers meant that many deliveries arrived with technical errors. Suppliers often struggled to understand how their deliveries failed to meet our specifications and often couldn t understand how to fix them. Josh Derby, VP. Technology Development & Strategy, DIscovery Communications

12 Cloud Use Cases in Media Post-Production In post-production, cloud technology has the potential to boost the time-to-market of new content as well as achieve greater operational ef ciency and collaboration. The collaborative nature of cloud technology is an extremely important feature with regards to this. In fact, cloud-based tools can give production/post-production teams the possibility to work on the same piece of content at the same time. For example, in post-production work ows, content can sit in a virtual repository, allowing different users to access low-resolution proxies for editing it as well as eliminating the need to send it back and forth (from the post-production company to the broadcaster). In this sense, increased collaboration is an enabler of increased speed-to-market and ef ciency. Phantom Sun, a post-production company founded in 2015 by former in-house BBC lead editors Eben Clancy and Chris Groom, was set up with the concept of pop-up postproduction. This consists of using cloud technology to enable remote editing, thus eliminating the need to pay for expensive rooms in a post-house. The new model enabled Phantom Sun to become more agile and responsive to clients' demands. It has also allowed the post-production company to achieve substantial savings by moving from Capex to Opex and to recruit talent from all over the world.

13 Cloud Use Cases in Media Jelly sh Pictures, a VFX company, decided to transition to the cloud in 2017 due to greater demand and higher resolution requirements. A cloud rendering solution was built using PC over IP (PCoIP), which, in addition to enabling greater collaboration, allowed the company to realize signi cant savings compared to its previous on-premise infrastructure. Therefore, in post-production settings, the cloud opens the possibility to better adjust to demand shifts by recruiting editors anywhere in the world. This use case has fueled the birth of partnerships between cloud service providers and editing vendors. For example, at the 2016 NAB Show, Autodesk and Google announced a partnership to allow users of Autodesk s Maya product to of oad complex rendering computation requirements to the Google Cloud Zync platform on an on-demand basis. This allows editors to cope with the bandwidth-hungry nature of higher resolution video. Producers are 100% looking to save costs and avoid paying for fancy rooms in a posthouse. We can quickly convert a regular office into a post-suite with a connection and portable acoustic panels and lighting. Recently we were doing seven edits, five offlines, a grade and dub without needing any physical space of our own. Eben Clancy, Joint Owner, Phantom Sun Source: IBC 365

14 Cloud Use Cases in Media Content Management In content management, cloud technology can streamline work ows by enabling remote access to content and multi-platform publishing. As the amount and importance of high-quality content continues to increase, there is demand to store and manage it ef ciently. Additionally, media companies often have a large amount of archive content that is not being utilized or monetized. Cloud technology in content management increases ef ciency, so time and resources, as it enables rms to centralize their content, which makes it easily accessible for various departments to access when needed. For example, in January 2018, Mega TV installed Dalet Uni ed News Operations solution to support digital and social media work ows. Dalet s solution enables journalists to share assignments, stories and any assets via a single interface. Mega TV also deployed the Dalet On-the-Go app to enable mobile work ows and Dalet s Social Media framework to retrieve, produce and distribute news to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube while harvesting engagement data. With the cloud, end-users can also move to a pay-as-you-go pricing model. A recent example of this is the VSNExplorer launched by Spanish vendor VSN at NAB Show 2018.

15 Cloud Use Cases in Media As mentioned earlier, in cloud-based asset management, users can collaborate more easily by accessing the central system from anywhere. Some MAM suppliers such as TransMedia Dynamics have integrated with multiple types of storage, including Amazon S3, to give users exibility over their asset management work ows. Despite the attractiveness of this model, only a few have moved their systems entirely in the cloud and on-premise deployments remain preferred by most users. Some of the limitations of the cloud are related to connectivity and service failures e.g. the AWS service failure in Customers remain generally reluctant to accept any kind of issues in the strategically important asset management deployments. Case Study: NEP + Discovery View on the IABM website In fact, media asset management deployments are complex and strategic for end-users; they sit at the heart of their supply chains. Media asset management is moving to the cloud but this transition will be gradual, particularly for endusers relying on large and complex legacy systems.

16 Cloud Use Cases in Media Distribution Companies using cloud technology in content distribution and delivery bene t from increased content available to consumers, faster time-to-market and reduced costs. Cloud technology enables companies to respond to changes in audience behavior and demand faster due to the scalability and exibility that cloud provides. One of the well-known cases of cloud technology being used for content distribution and delivery, as well as other media work ows, is Net ix, which uses the public cloud services of Amazon Web Services (AWS). The company completed its full migration to cloud infrastructure in early 2016, after seven years, and shut down the last remaining dedicated data center used by the streaming service. ITV also embarked on the journey to cloud using the services of AWS. The company used AWS Elemental, running in the cloud, to modernize the capabilities and service quality of its ITV Player streaming service. AWS Elemental Live software is deployed in ITV s two playout centers, encoding high-quality streams to two ITV data centers where ITV online services originate. Here, AWS Elemental Live encodes the high-quality streams into multicast streams for online and connected devices before going to the content delivery network (CDN).

17 Cloud Use Cases in Media In 2017, Hulu also picked AWS as its cloud provider. At the end of 2017, Discovery completed its transition to cloud playout running on AWS and based on technology provided by Evertz. The cloud playout solution encompasses delivery of both recorded and live programming. The solution is based on six data centers, distributed across two geographic areas one in the US and one in Europe which host Evertz s products. Video is moved to and from the cloud through mezzanine level compression. Case Study: Amagi + Vice Media View on the IABM website Vice Media is another major cloud adopter. In 2017, the company started using Amagi s Cloudport cloud-based channel playout to launch localized channels targeting individual markets, including Africa, Belgium, New Zealand and The Netherlands. All of Viceland s content assets have migrated to the cloud, with Amagi providing the company with a managed broadcast service in the cloud with playout, delivery and continuous monitoring. Using cloud infrastructure, Viceland was able to choose new markets and launch local feed cost-effectively. Turner also became an Amagi customer for playout.

18 About IABM IABM is the international trade association for suppliers of broadcast and media technology. IABM facilitates the important networking and interaction between suppliers that shape and de ne the unique ecosystem of the broadcast and media technology industry. IABM supports member companies with a comprehensive range of services across market intelligence, training, events, technology, exhibitions, business standards and best practices. We hold the interests of member companies as paramount, and strive to provide strong guidance and support at every level in all geographies. We understand that in today s rapidly changing media landscape, our members have never had a greater need for timely, relevant and effective advice and support. IABM s mission is to be an ever more powerful beacon illuminating the way forward, highly responsive to all our members needs and helping them to successfully navigate change and prosper. Further information about IABM and its activities can be found at