The emergence of cloud computing is enticing, and almost every sector leverages the cloud advantage. One industry that adapts to these growing trends is the Entertainment & media industry.
Regardless of the size, big and small media and entertainment companies worldwide are making changes and moving to the cloud, which gives them a seamless platform that helps them with digital content delivery to customers.
With the growing demand for large digital content, customers usually demand fast access to videos, movies, and other related content at their fingertips. With more and more people working from home, the demand has increased multifold, and customers want to access these videos regardless of their location or the device that they are using.
Digital content is readily available on so many different platforms, and most of them are accessible also on any device. The users are not always bothered about permission or formats, or protection. They need an interconnected system that is available 24×7.
It is precisely these demands that are pushing media and entertainment companies to embrace cloud computing. More and more broadcasters are successfully adopting cloud technology since they control the entire chain, i.e., managing all content from ideation, creation, storage, post-production, and more. Having a single cloud platform helps them deliver things on time and also gives the users what they want when they want.
Connection between Over-the-top content (OTT) & Cloud Computing
In the age of digital world and the present situation, continuing with traditional broadcasting methods and delivering content in an old-fashioned way is impossible. Adopting cloud computing could be a game changer for the media and entertainment industry, where digital content is delivered directly to users without the involvement of any system operators. OTT is the futuristic way ahead for the media & entertainment industry, and any digital content producer must upgrade to cloud to catch up with growing trends and keep up with digital changes happening worldwide.
Benefits of Cloud Computing for Media & Entertainment Industry
Cloud technology has emerged as the leading solution for the media & entertainment industry since cloud platforms provide resources that can be easily distributed, managed, protected and even monetized for all the digital assets produced.
Let’s look at the industry-specific benefits of how adopting cloud can help the M&E sector:
Opting for the right cloud partner will simplify processes, cut costs, and increase productivity by automating tedious tasks. It also gives enough time for businesses to adapt and cater to ever-changing demands. The number of Media and entertainment companies that adopt cloud computing is rapidly increasing. If you haven’t signed up for a cloud partner yet, now is the right time to take your media and entertainment business to cloud.
- Enhanced Collaborative Production: Collaborative workflow is extremely important, especially in content production, which is possible through cloud computing. Many media companies have successfully switched to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and achieved collaborative content editing, file storage, and resource allocation. Cloud offers immediate benefits by providing an excellent user experience.
- Global distribution: The demands can be unpredictable while dealing with content distribution to multiple regions. Most large OTT platforms are run on the cloud and use content delivery networks (CDNs) to serve videos to their viewers. In such cases, the cloud allows you to scale as per demand. It also helps deliver live broadcast-grade content without hassle and offers viewing channels online, just like many providers do during major sporting events.
- Secure Remote Work: Cloud has significantly enabled remote work, especially during the pandemic. Mobile working supported by collaboration tools needs powerful security that cloud offers. It helps protect employees’ applications, devices, and crucial sensitive data. With single sign-on and multi-factor authentication (MFA), staff can easily access tools and resources anywhere and anytime.
- Faster Content Delivery: Cloud-based workflows speed up the supply chain. Once content is available in the cloud, multiple people can access it at one time directly without a series of distributions. This is especially useful during news broadcasting and live sports because it improves coordination. Be it sharing breaking news or a winning goal or match outcome, it can be shared with all distribution channels in almost real-time. Over a period of time, the entire process can be automated too.
- Better Resilience: Power outages, equipment failure, or cyber-attacks, traditional data recovery is time-consuming but is slow, risky, and complex. Replicating a data center in terms of having duplicate storage, servers, networking equipment, etc., as part of disaster preparation is generally a tedious experience as well as heavy on the pocket. To add to the woes, legacy systems take a lot of time to back up and restore. This holds especially true when dealing with big data and large content libraries. Having your data stored in the cloud allows you to recover from disasters faster. Also, it ensures that you have continued access to information and do not lose out on important data.
