flow you have, and those adamant that hardware used after it has been written off is essentially free of charge – with subscription models only moving in one direction: up. This estimate doesn’t usually include expenses for the bandwidth required to send data into the cloud for processing, and then hauled back – AKA cloud egress. As a result, it may turn out to be a bigger expense item than anticipated. Hardware infrastructure evidently generates sizeable data transfer costs – increasingly in the guise of dark fibre lines – when the compute power is at a different location. This can be offset by cheaper leases and the fact that one device may be shared by at least three locations at different times. A rental-based approach, on the other hand, requires thorough planning – and may not work at times of unexpected peaks, chances being that the equipment you need by yesterday is already taken or would take too long to arrive – or to be online. Long-term leases are almost certainly more costly than purchasing the kit outright, and so are not really an option. WHAT IF… This brings us to the what-if section. Imagine a set-up that lives partly in your private cloud – a central location or scattered across the world – and partly on one of your premises where it’s more convenient. Add to that the possibility of soliciting a public-cloud- based service for a short period of time. This would make your operation seriously agile. Next, look at how – and how much – you would be willing to spend on such an infrastructure, knowing that your CFO is a fan of predictability and lean expenses. What would be the best way to solve this conundrum? ADD THE OPTION TO TAKE SOFTWARE- DEFINED HARDWARE TO THE EXTREME
Then, picture for a moment what would happen if there was no benefit to be gained from updating your number-crunching tools for the job at hand or simply because you preferred the previous version. Upgrading takes time we no longer have. Add the option to take the concept of software-defined hardware to the extreme, so as to be prepared for almost anything your broadcast activity may throw at you. This goes beyond agility as we currently know it.
Such a concept has the power to make your infrastructure and operation as elastic as a rubber band, without ever snapping. It goes without saying that you would have to remain in control at all times, from a location of your choice. Think of what that could do to the carbon footprint of your OB fleet and to the space you can save in your equipment room. It may not be quite as fun as an inflatable butler, but it would certainly change the broadcast world.
STRATEGIC PLACEMENT Cloud-integrated set-ups allow you to have your largest physical
data centres where most convenient
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