It is fascinating to see how the latest technologies and digital products have “changed the game” for the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry. Earlier, a lot of M&E companies were becoming bloated with vast repositories of data on numerous point solutions. This was hindering their ability to navigate cyber threats, and track internal as well as competitor / external performance metrics.
It was at this point that Cloud Computing technologies came as a savior for the M&E industry. Cloud solutions helped them take meaningful actions to improve their overall productivity and drive innovation. All forward-thinking M&E companies are now revising their digital strategies and rapidly deploying Cloud Computing services and solutions across the board.
M&E Sector and Cloud Computing – The Current Scenario
Recently, the Nielsen study claimed that there was globally a 60% increase in the consumption of video content. This was due to an increase in pandemic-related home-bound consumers. It was also reported that 9 out of 10 people expressed their desire to watch video illustrations of the various products and services being offered by businesses as well as brands.
This increase in the consumption of online content has put the streaming industry on a strong growth trajectory. It has been estimated that the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the Streaming Video-On-Demand (SVOD) sector will be 10.6%, till the year 2025. This makes the total worth of the SVOD market to be US $81 billion.
In the year 2020,/ there was a paradigm shift in the content streaming industry. Around 2 million users shifted from multi-channel subscriptions to various content streaming platforms.
In a recent EY research, almost 50% of the M&E sector’s top executives admitted that legacy business infrastructures are no longer sufficient for their future growth plans. Cloud-based ecosystems can help them re-invent their operations and drastically improve customer engagement.
Advantages of Cloud Computing Technologies in the M&E Industry
For the purpose of additional storage, distribution, and archiving, media and entertainment (M&E) companies are increasingly eyeing the services and solutions of the Cloud. The following points highlight the benefits of deploying Cloud Computing solutions in the M&E sector.
1. Fast-Paced Marketing
The highly scalable and secure services of Cloud Computing architectures can help the media sector improve its overall productivity, by increasing both the production quality and quantity. Large content files can be quickly processed over the Cloud, which decreases their workflow intervals.
A Singapore-based media company, Mediacorp, has recently deployed Cloud Computing solutions to transform its broadcast operations. Mediacorp achieved workflow orchestration and centralization of its view and control points.
This transfer of digital assets helped them deliver their content to 35 brands of TV, radio, and Over Top Media Service (OTT) platforms. The agility of Cloud Computing services allowed Mediacorp to quickly and seamlessly deliver video and audio content to its wide customer base.
2. International Reach and Scalability
The M&E companies have leveraged Cloud Computing services to seamlessly transmit their videos and media assets across the globe, that too in a cost-effective manner. Whether it is the post-production process of a motion picture or live broadcast of a world cup match, intelligent Cloud storage options and instant accessibility of Cloud-based solutions have helped the M&E sector to fulfill evolving market demands.
The media and entertainment industry often face fluctuations in the demand for content consumption. Cloud-based auto-scaling can balance out loads during usage spikes or sharp declines.
Multi-tenancy and auto-scaling capabilities of Cloud Computing technology have allowed Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to achieve economies of scale and cost optimization. This has enabled them to transfer these reduced costs to the M&E industry as well.
A leading CSP, dinCloud, offers a robust Cloud orchestration portal, dinManage. M&E companies can use this portal to effectively manage their cloud environment from a “single pane of glass”. Organizations can leverage its auto-scaling feature, among others, to optimize usage and storage capacity, Virtual Machines (VMs) management, and network resources. All this can be done seamlessly via dinManage, without disrupting core front-end activities.
3. Improved Collaboration
The M&E sector is constantly fighting the battle to store and protect vast amounts of data. This includes hours of raw footage, the unfinished product, or multiple takes of a feature film. Fast-paced Cloud architecture improves real-time collaboration on workflows, by centralizing content repositories. This allows media houses to stay within their allocated budgets and tight schedules.
With the help of Cloud-powered solutions, the M&E industry can also empower its news correspondents from across the globe, to easily have two-way communication, and report back n forth to their parent firms.
Every single employee of such media companies can access Cloud-based user portals. This can greatly improve their overall collaboration, as all the team members will have remote access to the same features and applications, irrespective of their location.
4. Top-Notch Engagement
Thanks to Cloud technologies, most of the resource-intensive activities have now become much easier. Case in point, dinCloud’s Hosted Virtual Databases can be used to showcase M&E companies’ entertainment content, across the globe. All their subscribers can have seamless access to any content, from anywhere, and over any device of their choice. The only requisite is, those resources need to be hosted over dinCloud’s environment.
Conclusion
Cloud adoptions have now become a standard practice for multiple industries, and they have particularly been able to grab the attention of the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. The unanimously positive feedback of numerous enterprises is a testament to the fact that Cloud-powered reliable, scalable, agile and widely compatible solutions will help the M&E industry reach new heights of success. With Cloud-based solutions, the future is expansive and lined with new avenues for success.
If you are a media company that wants to leverage Cloud Computing solutions to roll out unique content services and have active customer engagement, you should have an effective partnership with a robust Cloud Service Provider (CSP).
