Evan Statton Amazon Web Services (AWS) Senior principal architect for media & entertainment
Which lessons from 2022 will you apply to the year ahead? In 2022, we saw media and entertainment (M&E) customers seeking out new ways to do things. Many organisations were either transitioning from tried-and-true processes, or in other cases, leveraging the cloud to support a new launch. This observation reinforces our continued efforts to invest in customers early in their cloud journey, so we can help guide them to solutions that fit their business and build new ones with them. For example, in the last year, Netflix built an entire visual effects studio in the cloud using AWS compute services on Local Zones. Opting to run a combination of diversified Amazon EC2 instance types and its VFX studio on Local Zones has allowed them to bring cloud resources closer to content creators, so that artists can work anywhere in the world and create without boundaries. Another example comes from international livestream sports service DAZN, who developed a new feature that gives Nippon Professional Baseball audiences more control over their highlights experience, leveraging real- time match data from Stats Perform, Amazon Rekognition Custom Labels machine learning and video analysis technology from AWS. Reflecting on the past year, we’ve gained more understanding of how our M&E customers work in an ecosystem. A more holistic view is helping us rally business efforts around our five industry innovation centres: content production, media supply chain and archive, broadcast, direct- to-consumer and streaming, plus data science and analytics. At IBC this year, we organised our booth to reflect each area and show how we support customers from content production through distribution. Recognising the importance of working collaboratively across each industry innovation centre will prove essential in 2023 and help us see where connections exist for customers as they transition more of their workloads to the cloud. You have to write three goals for 2023 on the back of a business card. What are they? 1. Advance collaboration across M&E workflows to bring value to customers. Ensure they are well architected on AWS. 2. Continue to help customers achieve
their sustainability goals by eliminating inefficiencies and providing solutions that allow them to reduce their carbon footprint. 3. Enhance the way customers and partners create, produce and distribute content. This goal aligns with MovieLabs’ 2030 vision – to bring media production entirely to the cloud. AWS has already helped solve five out of ten principles that make up MovieLabs’ vision – eight years ahead of schedule – and we plan to continue this work in 2023. Every month that carbon emissions rise is a nail in the coffin of a survivable future. What will you do to help reduce emissions in 2023? AWS is committed to running our business in an environmentally friendly way, and our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilisation and energy efficiency than a typical on-premises data centre. A study by international analyst firm 451 Research found that AWS’ infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of surveyed enterprise data centres, with over two- thirds of this advantage due to a more efficient server population and higher server utilisation. In addition to the environmental benefits associated with cloud-based applications, we’re committed to powering our business with 100% renewable energy by 2030 and are on path to reach that target by 2025. Our push to use more renewable energy is one step on our path to net zero carbon by 2040 as part of Amazon’s climate pledge. At this year’s IBC Show, we heard the term ‘change management’ over and over. What is the biggest change the industry needs to negotiate in 2023? Change is a constant for our M&E customers, so our focus in 2023 will centre on helping them adapt to new business models, emerging workflows and evolving goals. We did this in our work with creative studio Pixomondo, who opted to incorporate AWS into its infrastructure to enable teams to collaborate across locations. We want to help customers evolve with the times, not just by transitioning to the cloud, but by showing how to embrace the advantages that come with it.
What’s your battle cry/motto for 2023? Think big. Anything is possible.
WE’VE GAINED MORE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW OUR M&E CUSTOMERS WORK IN AN ECOSYSTEM
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