The Advantages of Cloud Computing for Media & Entertainment
How do businesses use cloud computing? In this section we look at how the advantages of using cloud storage are helping the M&E sector face four of its most important challenges.
Demanding Consumers, Unpredictable Demand
Today’s consumers of media and entertainment content expect flexibility and choices. In addition, consumer demand is unpredictable, with spikes and surges in viewership that have to be dealt with in real time. The on-demand characteristics of cloud computing provide the levels of scalability and flexibility that the M&E sector needs to cost-effectively meet volatile demand, automatically spinning servers up and down as demand ebbs and flows.
Agility, Speedier Time to Market, Continuous Expansion of Content
In order to stay competitive, content creators in the M&E sector are under pressure to produce and/or distribute original content more frequently and faster. Without the cloud it would be close to impossible to store, manage, and deliver these huge quantities of digital content in an agile, dynamic and cost-effective manner. Hybrid and/or multicloud deployments can provide an even greater measure of flexibility, allowing workloads to be shifted seamlessly across public and private infrastructures.
Cost Benefits of Cloud Computing
Traditional M&E distribution companies such as cable or broadcast television are being challenged by new trends in television broadcasting and agile, low-cost OTT (Over the Top) companies that sell and/or deliver streaming audio, video and other media directly to consumers over the Internet. Other factors that are challenging the bottom lines of the content-oriented M&E companies are the rising costs of content licensing, as well as shortened technology lifecycles.
Cloud computing in the media and entertainment industry offers opportunities to contain technology and storage costs in order to balance the rising costs in other areas. By shifting from a CAPEX model to the cloud’s OPEX model, for example, M&E companies can reduce their sunk costs in storage and delivery technologies and infrastructures. Also, using the different tiers of cloud storage SLAs for their hot vs. cold digital assets can reduce storage costs considerably for M&E companies.
High Performance, Minimal Delays/Downtime
High streaming performance, with minimal delays and downtime, is critical both in terms of user experience as well as advertiser expectations. A six-second delay in streaming an ad for a hit show, for example, can cost a media company hundreds of thousands of dollars that they have to give back to the advertiser.
The cloud provides ample opportunities for dispersed and redundant
architectures that support high availability and high-performance SLAs, such as multi-region, multicloud, and hybrid deployments.