by operating expense (OpEx) budgets that are more flexible and aligned with the operational requirements of broadcast facilities. Using the cloud for remote production is certainly one application with many advantages, including flexibility and the ability to scale up and down quickly, but it may not always be the financially sensible option. Existing investment made in TV technology runs into the hundreds of billions, and broadcasters can continue to sweat these assets for a significant amount of time. Operators may find that some processes are still more efficient, faster, cheaper, and provide larger capacity via local, specialised hardware. Nonetheless, the hardware restrictions of the past have been removed by the software and increasingly available COTS solutions. The transition to IP has been rightly heralded as a game-changer. Flexible and scalable infrastructures are achievable, giving broadcasters unprecedented choice. THE POWER OF CHOICE This choice includes cloud. These days, CTOs must be able to move any process to any infrastructure at any time – whether that is rewiring a studio with ST 2110, moving channels to private data centres, relocating workflows to the public cloud or any hybrid combination. IP means freedom from the hard-wired silos of SDI. It means frictionless interoperability of best of breed applications. The last thing broadcasters want is to trade the vendor lock-in
TECHNOLOGY THAT PROMISES CLOUD AGNOSTICISMHAS TO BE A PRIORITY
of the past by ceding control to a single cloud provider. No matter how large, no provider is immune from business failure. Spinning up and down services on-demand with fees only for usage is a tremendous development, but the costs of ingress, egress and transport around the cloud offer no long-term guarantees. Technology that promises cloud agnosticism has to be a priority. Above and beyond this, the industry should be working towards finding commonality of interests for working with multiple clouds, standardising the exchange of data and protocols. The pan-European Gaia-X initiative ( data-infrastructure.eu/GAIAX/Navigation/ EN/Home/home.html ) points towards this goal. The project envisages an open, transparent digital ecosystem, where data and services are available, collated and shared in an environment of trust. Choice can also mean true cloud-native software applications. Cloud-enabled approaches will work on COTS, but have not been built from the ground-up to maximise the compute power of virtual machines. Consequently, the ability to swap, mix and architect tailored systems per workflow, channel, station, per entire studio over IP and in the cloud will falter. There is a need for a more agile approach, grounded in decades of trusted engineering.
NOT REMOTELY BETTER? R&S offers a flexible approach to adopting IP-based workflows, ensuring an effective transition
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