Even sceptical broadcasters have decided that cloud is in their future. Where are you on your cloud journey?
hile it might seem like things have been standing still over the past year, under the surface, change is happening. With media teams forced out of facilities and working from home, companies had to decide not if they were
not make sense, but what can you logically move to the cloud to bring more efficiencies?” probes Wills. Reducing the adoption of cloud to bite-sized, intelligently adopted chunks seems to be the way forward for most companies. In the last year, Wills has seen companies bring aboard cloud for its ability to enable remote working, remote access to channels and infrastructure and to be able to work and think independently of bricks-and-mortar locations. “People came to us wondering how to run their channel remotely. Previously, you could get away with a remote desktop set-up, but the pandemic accelerated that requirement for
going to embrace cloud technologies, but how much. Some were already well on their way in their cloud journey, but others were looking for convincing reasons to venture beyond the cloud- based add-ons adopted in 2020. Imagine Communications has been supplying and advising major
broadcasters for years and is now helping many of them boost their efficiency and profitability with help from the cloud. Over the past year,
someone to be able to sit down at a web browser and be able to monitor and manage the entire workflow from anywhere,” he says. Another easy benefit to be gained from the cloud are the systems for disaster recovery and business continuity. These systems usually
the company has identified some major advantages in committing to cloud, such as flexibility and the ability to experiment. “It used to take a long time to set up a
only need be engaged in rare emergencies, so it makes sense to offload some of them to the cloud rather than having to maintain and staff physical infrastructure. Wills concludes: “In the short term, companies can continue to use a mix of their
channel,” says Imagine Communications’ playout product manager, Gareth Wills. “It took a long time planning, a long time installing, a long time testing. Now we’re seeing customers who are asking to set up channels within weeks. Cloud is really about being able to experiment and be agile – if it doesn’t work, you can tear it down and try something else.” With advertising money stretched thin in the
own hardware with cloud systems, but cloud technology is evolving very quickly. Data is cheap and it’s going to get cheaper. I see it getting to the point where even things like ingress and egress costs and latency characteristics will be such that it’s all going to be as good as doing things in a traditional facility.”
current environment, broadcasters need to find ways to be clever and creative, both with their standard linear channels and with spinning up additional channels and content opportunities that are enabled by the elasticity of the cloud. Imagine Communications was early to move to a software- centric architecture for its products, including its Versio modular playout solution, which made it easy to deploy in the cloud, as cloud technology has become broadcast-ready. “As you move to the cloud, you have to look at what business problems you’re trying to solve. Just moving over everything may
For more information, please visit imaginecommunications. com/versio-playout- solutions
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