This is the second part of our ongoing series focused on cloud adoption in media and entertainment (M&E), to support the continued digital transformation of the industry. Read “Embracing Emerging Global Digital Workflows for M&E” to learn more.
Technology drives and defines today’s emergingmedia and entertainmentbusiness models, particularly the way content is produced, transported, managed and distributed. The old model — content is created over several months in fixed locations and then linearly distributed through tightly controlled media — is dead. Today’s media and entertainment companies are faced with numerous obstacles that weren’t fathomable a decade ago, including consumer demand for multichannel content (traditional and mobile) production across several geographies simultaneously and distribution on-demand (often in real time) across several different media [digital video, mobile, over-the-top (OTT), etc.].
This creates an unprecedented set of technology challenges that M&E companies need to address to produce, transport, manage and distribute digital content to global users on demand. Here’s a closer look at the four biggest issues facing media and entertainment executives:
Production — Content creation/production cuts across broad areas of the industry touching everything from acquisition, principal photography (TV/film), feature animation, rendering farms, linear/nonlinear production and post-production global workflows.
Transport — M&E companies need to securely transport high-value digital content from remote locations around the world to local studio locations for TV/film production, live events, etc. M&E companies need network topologies that support on-demand, high-bandwidth secure networks with capacity for video transport of compressed and uncompressed live and file-based workflows.
Management — M&E companies store, protect, manage, transcode and refine digital content for varied applications, audiences and delivery platforms. To do this efficiently, M&E companies require ways to integrate complex process functions across global cloud-centric environments. This demands use of scalable infrastructure (to increase operational efficiency and trim costs) and moving technology investments from capital expense (capex) to operational expense (opex) categories.
Distribution — Clients demand high-quality digital distribution and a customized user experience across any platform, anytime and anywhere in the world. This includes everything from studio executives reviewing digital dailies remotely for movie productions to finished content digital cinema distribution. Live event digital distribution examples include multi-camera OTT streaming of events like awards shows on mobile devices, all the way up to high-definition delivery of live concerts using 4K digital cinema projectors. Broadcast companies are deriving immediate benefits from OTT distribution using advanced content delivery networks (CDN) to reach millions of clients worldwide, supporting the unbundling of cable channels and the transition to channel delivery on an à la carte basis.
M&E companies that recognize technology is driving the industry, not serving it, will address these challenges head on and develop fully integrated solutions that best serve their clients and the end users. I will be covering solutions to these challenges in upcoming articles on New & Insights.
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