82 Friday 13.09.13 theibcdaily IaaS gives broadcasters superpowers
Infrastructure-as-a-Service facilitates increased access to centralised processes for improved 24/7 workflow and global collaboration, explains Ben Roeder, CTO, Sohonet
The industry is undoubtedly going through a process of rapid change. Not only are viewing habits changing, but also formats and standards. As demand for ever-increasing, high quality content grows, the ability to create, manage, store and repurpose content effectively and cost-effectively will play a pivotal role in deciding a content provider’s survival. Technological advances in
file-based workflow have made it possible for the creative industries to automate the ingest, editing, approval and transcoding stages of content creation. Indeed, the increasing digitisation of the industry has helped significantly reduce the cost and complexity of handling greater volumes of content. Yet for many, a
comprehensive digitisation
programme is still out of reach. Being lumbered with cumbersome legacy IT systems and the high upfront investment of new infrastructure and integration costs to utilise mission-critical software components and innovative cloud-based services has simply meant that many companies are finding it difficult to keep pace or take part at all. That is all set to change.
New developments in robust, media-aware Infrastructure-as- a-Service (IaaS) solutions are enabling content providers to extend their infrastructure capabilities in Storage, Compute, DR and Back-up on a highly flexible, pay-as-you-go basis. These on-demand Infrastructure solutions are providing unparelled access to
a range of cloud solutions that also allow content producers to manage, innovate and monetise their assets like never before. The ability to scale IaaS
services, such as Compute and Storage, up and down according to the requirements of a particular project is of huge importance to an industry that is predominantly project- driven. Performance and security concerns are always high on customers’ lists of concerns, but private cloud offerings are beginning to allay these fears, and there is increasing confidence in the market that private cloud offerings, in fact, enhance security rather than reduce it. Media companies will no
longer need to invest exclusively in expensive on-site processing hardware to service just one or two processing peaks in the year – when they can access that processing power to handle these peaks only when they need it. Costly computers left idle do not make good business sense
and nor are they good for the environment. IaaS will significantly reduce
the cost of IT ownership, whilst providing the agility to react quickly to new workflows and business demands and the flexibility to react quickly to new market opportunities. Cost savings are not just
about moving capital cost to operational cost but from developing more efficient operational working practices and the ability to enhance working efficiencies across different geographies – IaaS will certainly facilitate increased access to centralised processes for improved 24/7 working practices and global collaboration. This all makes for a potentially game changing service offering that will open up new business models to organisations willing to invest the time in transforming their business practices. According to Devoncroft’s
2013 Broadcast Industry Global Trend Index, the ‘monetising of content on multiple platforms’ remains the top objective for
Ben Roeder: ‘A potentially game changing service’
broadcast professionals in the year ahead; yet broadcasters and content owners consistently complain that they must dramatically increase their efficiencies through the implementation of new workflows and technical systems to be able to achieve this. With the importance of ‘file-
based/tapeless workflows’ ranked second in Devoncroft’s survey, it would seem that IaaS really could not have come a better time to give the industry what it is crying out for. 4.A61D
Opinion
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