In Broadcast - May 2015 - 56

56

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 5 | May 2015

InMedia

The Intercloud Helps Take
Interoperability To New Heights
Contributing Editor Adrian Pennington
discusses the impact of the cloud market
today and the key role it will play in the
future of broadcasting...

A

ccording to analysts IDC, the
cloud market of the future
belongs to providers that can offer
secure, integrated high-performance
application delivery to end users at a
reasonable cost.
If Market Research Media is to be
believed, the cloud market is already
worth $121 billion as it shoots north of
$270bn by 2020.
Cloud is on a roll and its impact is
being felt in all areas of the creation
management and delivery of content
everywhere from acquisition to
post and onward consumption by
individuals.
While the technology isn't new, only
recently has it begun to play a critical
role in the video workflow process as
broadcasters seek new ways to reduce
the costs of their video processing and
quality control needs. The immediately
available processing infrastructure
of the cloud is naturally appealing to
broadcasters as it eliminates the need
to actually purchase and deploy costly
equipment, which reduces their capital
costs.
In the 2014 Devoncroft BBS
Broadcast Industry Global Trend Index
'Cloud Services / Cloud Technology'
was ranked fifth in terms of industry
trends that are most important
commercially to broadcast technology
end-users.
According to the report this indicates
that while there continues to be
skepticism (not to mention security
concerns) about cloud technology,
the willingness to consider cloud
technology and services increased
rapidly last year.
"If you were to start a greenfield
business you would not buy hardware,
you would run straight to the cloud but
for legacy businesses and those who
have invested money and effort into
building in-house systems there will
be a transition," said Cisco's Senior
Manager Video Marketing, JT Taylor
at IBC Content Everywhere MENA in
February. "If you have invested a lot of

money in LTO tape for archive you are
not ready to give that up yet."
Nonetheless, reading the runes of
public announcements and as yet
unannounced deals, Taylor confidently
declared 2015 as the year more and
more service operators will move to
the cloud.
"I think most operators will start
by testing deployment, perhaps
with disaster recovery, if not for full
production yet."
So what are buyers of broadcast
technology actually planning to deploy
in the cloud? It's probably no surprise
that 'storage' was the use-case
mentioned most often by 2014 BBS
participants since the cloud's capacity
is essentially limitless. Mezzanine files
can be uploaded after local ingest and
editing, and then retrieved for further
processing on in-house equipment
if so desired. Better yet, they can be
acquired, processed, re-stored and
even archived without ever leaving
the cloud. The combination of lowcost digital acquisition technology,
ever-increasing shooting ratios, and
the desire to monetise content assets
over multiple distribution platforms
is driving the need for more storage
(both on and off-premise).
When it comes to storage the use
case is pretty compelling. Broadcasters
can configure the same computing
platforms, operating systems and
amount of storage as they have used
in plant. They can send and retrieve

VMX OTT

Aspera On Demand

files at the time of processing, or store
the files in the cloud and perform
operations like transcoding exclusively
within the cloud.
Use cases beyond storage are
however increasingly common and
include streaming, archiving, editing,
transcoding, and content distribution.
Netflix, poster child of the streaming
revolution, began to move its
transcoding operations into the cloud
in 2008 and by 2010 it was video
streaming from the cloud too.
Using the cloud for transcoding can
be extremely cost-effective depending
on the amount of transcoding
required. For example, if a broadcaster
only requires fairly infrequent
transcoding, it can forgo on-premise
transcoders entirely and rely solely on
the cloud.
"Conversely, if a broadcaster is
continually transcoding content and
already has on-premise transcoders
it can use the cloud to handle peaks
in transcoding demand, maximising
their current equipment investment
without requiring the need to purchase
additional units," informs Tektronix'
U.N. Vasudev, Strategic Product
Planner and Business Development
Manager. "QC operates similarly; with
cloud-based QC solutions performing

the same tasks as solutions deployed
on site."
The greatest benefit accrues when
multiple processes are teamed up
in a broad cloud-based workflow -
Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) streaming
delivery is an example.
"While only the largest broadcasters
are currently using ABR streaming
themselves as another method to
deliver their programming, the trend
is expected to grow as broadcasters
increasingly seek to offer viewers
a multi-screen experience," says
Vasudev.
Cloud Business Models
We are becoming familiar with the
basic ways cloud providers bill for their
service. These include Infrastructure
as a Service (IaaS) - which basically
substitutes the cloud for certain onpremises hardware. With no up-front
costs and capable of scaling up or
down on demand, IaaS can be ideal for
smaller operators. Larger broadcasters
can use IaaS to cost-effectively handle
peaks in demand while maintaining
their own on-premises infrastructure
for day-to-day operations.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) includes
a computing platform and a solution
stack for developing web applications
that includes OS, web server, database
and programming language. Then
there is Software as a Service (SaaS),
which brings virtually everything into
the cloud.
There are also different types of
cloud: public cloud which is seen as
a utility by businesses for buying
computing, storage and bandwidth
on-demand.
Companies
wanting
exclusive control over how their data
is managed will look to private clouds.
Hybrid clouds fairly obviously operate
in parallel.
http://cloud.asperasoft.com/aspera-on-demand/
In Broadcast - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - May 2015
