Cloud Essentials

What is it?

Cloud technology can be defined as a type of computing enabling users to access a variety of IT-based services via the Internet.

Cloud-based technology is often classified on the basis of infrastructure ownership (Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud):

There is also a further classification of cloud technology based on the type of service offered (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS):

Cloud computing has gradually evolved over the years, starting with mainframe computing in the 1950s. The 1970s saw the concept of virtual machines created with IBM releasing an operating system called VM. The 1990s saw telecommunications companies expand their offering of single dedicated point-to-point data connections to start offering virtualized private network connections. In 1999, Salesforce.com became one of the first movers into the cloud arena with the idea of using the internet to enable end-users to access software programs remotely via a browser. In 2002, Amazon introduced its web-based retail services. In 2006, Amazon launched AWS, giving birth to the thriving cloud computing services market.

The next section looks at cloud adoption in broadcast and media.

Cloud Adoption Tracker

This section contains an analysis of the adoption of the cloud in broadcast and media.

​According to IABM data, cloud adoption in broadcast and media is increasing rapidly, as shown by the chart below:

In terms of deployment models, respondents continue to prefer hybrid cloud deployments (33%) with the preference for private and public clouds equating to 25% and 23% respectively.

The next section discusses the most important applications of the cloud in the content chain.

Cloud Deployments in Broadcast & Media

Broadcast and media organizations are moving workflows to the cloud for a variety of reasons. Industry dynamics are changing; technology buyers want flexible and collaborative technology business models and they need to dramatically reduce the time-to-market of their services. Cloud technology is helping them do exactly that although different broadcast and media organizations are at different stages of the transition to cloud. Below, we comment upon some use cases of cloud technology in the broadcast and media industry – these are divided by the workflow area of application.

Create, Produce & Manage

At the beginning of the content supply chain, cloud technology has the potential to streamline production workflows by improving collaboration and decreasing the time to market of content. In Manage, the deployment of cloud technology can lead to substantial efficiency gains for broadcast and media organizations although adoption in this part of the content chain remains lower than one might expect.

Create

In Create, the cloud cannot disrupt product categories such as cameras as much as it is doing in other parts of the content chain that are transitioning to software. However, companies that have moved to cloud production workflows have demanded equipment that fits into that paradigm. Therefore, technology suppliers in this part of the BaM Content Chain® have responded by augmenting their offerings with new functionalities. This is true particularly for camera suppliers.

Several camera manufacturers have integrated cloud capabilities into their offerings to enable news and sports broadcasters to improve the time to market of their content. These solutions allow users to either ingest the content directly from the camera to a cloud-based management system or to stream it live to various platforms like social media and apps. For example, as early as 2013, JVC partnered with Zixi to integrate cloud-based networking and transport features into JVC cameras. In 2015, Panasonic partnered with LiveU to integrate its P2HD cameras with LiveU's cloud-based management system so that users could send the content directly there. These solutions have enabled ENG crews to shoot news footage much more swiftly and bring less equipment onsite.

These initiatives have also contributed to democratizing professional video production workflows and enlarging the number of markets addressable by professional camera manufacturers. In fact, JVC and Zixi expanded their partnership at IBC 2018 “to better provide broadcast-quality streaming services to education, sports, religious, government, and other non-broadcast storytellers.” A low-barrier-to-entry streaming product was launched for this purpose. This has allowed camera manufacturers to better cope with price compression and increased competition in their traditional markets.

Large technology suppliers such as Sony have rolled out solutions that encompass the whole production workflow – akin to product bundles – to lock customers into their offerings. In 2018, Sony launched its Virtual Production service which aims to provide a cloud-based production workflow that starts from the camera and finishes with the video delivered to various outlets – a more detailed discussion on this type of solution is provided in the next section on Produce. With this solution, users only need to connect the cameras to a cloud-based management system to enable footage to be transported into the cloud.

At NAB 2019, Sony introduced 65 new features for its cloud-based content acquisition and processing platform, Ci. Sony’s Ci relies on AWS and acts as a live contribution, streaming and clipping platform for news broadcasters. Its cloud-based Ci MediaLog software provides end-users with the ability to search and transfer content via wireless transmission directly out of the camera by using time-based metadata to streamline the process. The Ci platform is integrated with Sony’s XDCAM air products, which automatically upload proxy footage to the cloud from multiple camera operators in the field so that editing can start immediately.

Similar to cameras, emerging creation equipment in news environment such as drones has been packed with cloud-based integration functionalities – FlytBase offers a service that connects drones to cloud-based applications. Other solutions in this area include Make.TV’s Live Video Cloud which enables users to ingest live video feeds from a variety of sources including cameras, smartphones, drones and online sources. At IBC 2019, Make.TV – acquired by LTN Global in 2019 – announced a collaboration agreement with Google Cloud. In the project, Make.TV’s Live Video Cloud (LVC) – deployed on Google Cloud Platform – is integrated with Google Cloud’s beta streaming APIs, which are focused on label detection (e.g. signal searches). Broadcasters can thus route live signals into existing or newly defined IP workflows and receive signals from a wide range of devices (e.g. professional cameras, encoders, mobiles, online sources and drones). This simplifies broadcasters’ production workflows – particularly in live sports – because end-users can acquire live content more quickly and route qualified content directly to for example newsrooms, social platforms or mixers. This is a clear advantage for remote production teams, who can make better use of different devices in the field.

With regard to other creation equipment, cloud-based control of lighting of other types of support equipment provides the usual cloud benefits like consumption-based payments as well as the possibility to control equipment through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

At IBC 2019, TVU Networks introduced the cloud-based TVU Talkshow, a multi-camera production solution enabling bi-directional audience participation in real-time. In practice, an unlimited number of viewers can video call-in by using the TVU Talkshow app on their mobile phone. The integrated caller management system of the solution enables producers to pre-screen all callers and seamlessly communicate with them. As an open platform, TVU Talkshow allows third parties to provide their services integrated via TVU Open API. For example, the cloud-based Singular.live IP graphics platform has already been integrated with TVU Talkshow, providing real-time graphics overlay capabilities for a live production environment from any location.

TVU Talkshow is an example of a solution which addresses the need for speed increasingly driving production environments in the new media age, where interactivity and user engagement have become crucial. So far, the cost and complexity involved in covering live, multi-camera events have often been barriers for content producers and thus multi-camera productions have mainly been confined to large, premium events. According to David Jorba, Executive Vice President at TVU Networks, the point of launching a cloud-based multi-camera production solution is to offer producers maximum scalability and an efficient pay-for-what-you-use business model. Fox Noire and Sky Sports are already using the TVU Talkshow solution.

An increasing number of production houses and major film studios are also preparing for the cloud. In August 2019, MovieLabs, a non-profit organization – steered by Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainments Inc., Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures & Television and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. – published a whitepaper outlining the principles that are key to MovieLabs’ 2030 vision. The first principle of the communiqué stated that in the future “all assets are created or ingested straight to the cloud and do not need to move”. Another key principle is to make “archives deep libraries with access policies matching speed, availability and security to the economics of the cloud”. To achieve these principals the members of MovieLabs accentuated the need for collaboration between everyone in the production ecosystem to create interoperable, interchangeable, best of breed production tools. However, in this process, the major production houses are relying on vendors’ innovations.

Produce

In Produce, the cloud has the potential to really disrupt current workflows from video production to post-production. Generally, the move to software and the cloud has prompted some suppliers to start offering solutions that cover the end-to-end production workflow – including post-production and content management. As highlighted before, this is very much a consequence of price compression in individual product categories as well as the changing demands of buyers.

A good example of this is the 2018 launch of the Virtual Production service by Sony  - cited also above in Create. This is very much an end-to-end service enabling users to upload content to a cloud-based content management system through an internet connection. Users, who can access this system via a browser, can create content through a variety of cloud-based tools such as a virtual switcher and a virtual editing suite and stream it to various social media platforms such as Facebook Live or YouTube. This solution enables users to adopt a consumption-based payment model.

At IBC 2018, TVU Networks launched a similar solution - Producer TVU - to cover live multi-camera events through an end-to-end cloud-based production workflow. This includes cloud-based switching, editing and streaming to multiple platforms.

Grabyo introduced a similar, cloud-based live video multi-camera production suite, Grabyo Producer, at IBC 2019. The solution enables broadcasters and other end-users to produce a seamless multi-source and multi-camera live broadcast from anywhere through an internet connection, a laptop and a web browser. End-users can also add remote guest or local commentary for a multi-location broadcast sent to multiple markets in real-time – enabling better localization of content.

These solutions democratize professional video production by making these tools available to alternative media technology buyers, from houses of worship to brands. They also meet a demand for remote production, particularly as sports broadcasters aim to cover more (and lower-tier) events at the same or lower cost. This has led several outside broadcast operators such as NEP Group to invest heavily in IP technology and cloud-based production to prepare themselves for a future shaped by remote production. NEP Group now offers a centralized production service – with a cloud production data center sitting at the heart of it - to cater to this need. Remote production is generally considered a driver behind lowering of costs and, more importantly, increased coverage and productivity.

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) – preparing for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo – is partnering with Alibaba Cloud to create a cloud-based sports broadcasting platform which will provide remote broadcast services to all broadcast engineers needing support with their on-site activities. Using the new OBS Cloud platform, broadcasters and other rights holders will need radically less location-based infrastructure (e.g. outside broadcast units, editing suits, network connectivity) and physical presence (e.g. on-site human resources) for remote broadcasting through the availability of cloud infrastructure. This reduces costs and enables sports broadcasters to also provide live coverage for more smaller-scale sporting events, which traditionally have gained less attention due to the high infrastructure investment required. In Tokyo, the OBS Cloud will be behind the scenes for broadcast production of 33 different sports – up from PyeongChang – from which the output will be shared with broadcast rights holders for the Summer Games. The OBS Cloud will also support the first-ever live coverage of the Olympic Games in UHD/HDR, enriched with sports highlights packages, behind-the-scenes clips and VR effects.

In post-production, the advent of the cloud has been a huge game-changer. As computer processing power has skyrocketed in recent years, post-production workflows have gradually moved to the cloud enabling new business models built around resource flexibility, access, collaboration and relocation. In fact, the cloud has introduced the possibility to rent resources such as processing power on a “pay-as-you-go” basis without the need to invest in expensive, on-premise infrastructure. Thus, it has also provided professionals the ability to access post-production tools from a laptop.

These changes have in turn favored the rise of remote editing and the emergence of new business models in the post-production industry. Some post companies have ditched their expensive, on-premise equipment – often, this happened when the equipment needed to be refreshed - to move to the cloud.  Others have moved not only to the cloud but also to another location – to flee from expensive cities. Relocation has also translated into the ability to outsource post-production work to an army of editors available globally, hence increasing the pool of talent. The possibility to collaborate in real-time on the same piece of content has also boosted collaboration – and productivity – in post-production environments. Examples of some post-production companies heavily reliant on cloud technology include: Phantom Sun, Green Rock and Jellyfish Pictures.

Rendering has been a “low-hanging fruit” for cloud technology as the power-hungry nature of this task has made the move to the cloud a no-brainer. This has fueled the birth of partnerships between cloud service providers and editing vendors. In June 2019, AWS Thinkbox announced that it had developed an ecosystem of partners to accelerate the transition of media and entertainment studios “to a hybrid, or full content production pipeline in the cloud”. In this framework, Six Nines IT, Teradici and Qumulo – key members of AWS’ partner ecosystem – are combining forces to build a solution for film and animation studios, which enables their collaboration across geographies as well as providing the flexibility to use major software tools from Adobe, Autodesk and other editing suites.

The emergence of cloud-based tools for collaboration – between editors as well as between editors and customers - and review such as Frame.io has also enabled post-production houses to increase productivity.

At IBC 2019, Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, Avid and Microsoft announced a 5-year collaboration agreement to innovate and deliver cloud-based solutions for production and post-production. In the project, Disney can experiment moving different workflows to the cloud. Highlighting the benefits of remote editing, content archiving and production continuity that the collaboration will bring to Disney, Ben Harvey, Vice President of Technology Innovation at Disney Studios, added: “AI will never replace the superb creative we have at Disney but it can help – the technology will see use at Disney within editorial tasks and then it will be likely be applied to all Disney projects”.

In general, the move to software and the cloud has had a large negative impact on selling prices for post-production software with many companies on the supply side differentiating their offerings to compensate for this. This is consistent with the move from production products to production solutions explored above.

As in Manage, the increasing level of customization required by post-production houses has also driven some of them to develop specific tools on top of existing solutions – more on this in the next section.

Manage

The search for efficiency is a very important driver of cloud deployment, particularly in Manage. As media companies increasingly see their enterprises as content factories that deliver video to multiple platforms, features such as resource flexibility and business analytics are becoming more important. Also, business analytics can better take advantage of new technologies that heavily rely on the cloud - such as AI – to also automate workflows.

In media asset management (MAM), the drive for efficiency is accentuated by the role played by these systems within broadcast and media organizations. As they sit at the center of media workflows, efficiencies gained in MAM systems can translate into widespread savings throughout the content chain. For example, workflow orchestration can drive efficiencies in other functions through business rules that flexibly align costs with demand. Although workflow orchestration and media asset management have been historically separated, there is a trend towards making them work together more closely as the data produced by asset management systems can drive more effective business rules.

The advent of the cloud and the rise of end-to-end production solutions have also favored a deeper integration between content management and production. Some of the solutions explored in the previous section include content management functionalities to enable users to manage their end-to-end production workflow from camera to screen.

Over the past few years, many suppliers in Manage have rolled out cloud-based, “pay-as-you-go” solutions to guarantee their customers more flexibility over payments and enable increased collaboration; many new cloud-based MAM systems enable access from several locations and allow sharing workflows between different companies. This obviously helps end-users to better engage with their viewers and to monetize content more accurately, while the increased collaboration at the content management layer also improves their productivity. Examples of solutions offering payment flexibility include the VSNExplorer and Cantemo both featuring “pay-as-you-go” models. Cantemo, for example, provides customers a set of tools to forecast consumption-based spending to allow them to meet budgets – they are working on alerts to enable users to avoid unexpected spending.

In August 2019, Dalet signed a deal with Austrian private broadcaster group ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 to move its media operations to the Dalet Galaxy 5 MAM, Workflow Orchestration and Editorial platform. ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 adopted the solution to better manage the news, sports, archives and program preparation workflows across its three channels PULS 4, ATV and ATV2, showing for example UEFA Europa League, National Football League and popular local productions. Christoph Stadlhofer, Broadcast System Engineer at ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 said: “We have a rapidly growing pool of content that needs to be centralized and enriched with metadata. In addition, we need tools that enable our staff to easily search, prepare and distribute that content, while managing a much higher output of programs and news content.”

The increasing requirement for customization of these strategic systems has driven a rise in in-house developments (BIY) of media asset management systems. According to our latest Buying Trends survey, most technology buyers plan to focus their in-house technology investment on the Manage part of the BaM Content Chain®.

Customization is often achieved through microservices, which allow users to build services as a suite of separate applications, thus guaranteeing operational flexibility and scalability. Marius Schipper, who leads R&D Monitoring & AV Analysis at Rhode&Schwarz, told The Broadcast Bridge in 2019: “A cloud solution based on microservice architecture allows scale and continuous development through continuous deployment. This is critical to keep up with the deployment speed of OTT ecosystems and to be able to react to new market trends more easily compared to a static or even hardware-based setup”.  

According to our data, end-users are becoming more willing to connect small pieces together than before when it comes to customization. This is largely due to the fact that technology buyers increasingly want to only pay for what they actually use. Simultaneously, they are concerned about the long-term costs that may come along with huge MAM systems and prefer to invest in lighter solutions like containers and microservices, which also provide end-users with flexibility and independence to move metadata around different media processes. The use of such lighter solutions – containers and microservices – also enables technology buyers to build object storage to a public cloud or archive of their choice.

At the 2017 IABM Annual International Business Conference, ITV talked about how they used microservices to integrate their media asset management solution with their transcoding solutions, with microservices acting as translators between the two. This is an important use case to overcome interoperability issues in media asset management deployments and enable the selection best-of-breed technology. ITV also developed some customized business rules to meet technical requirements.

Netflix was one of the earliest adopters of microservices; it set up its microservice architecture on AWS as early as 2009. Netflix transitioned first its movie encoding and other non-customer facing applications to the new architecture and then decoupled all customer facing elements (e.g. account sign ups, movie selection, configuration and device selection). According to the company, the transition process took two years and today the Netflix application leverages over 500 microservices and API Gateways, which manage over two billion API edge requests.

These approaches are consistent with a gradual move to cloud-based media asset management whereby media organizations may adopt a hybrid cloud model with some cloud-based workflows – or build part of it in-house.

Media management deployments are complex and strategic for technology users; they sit at the heart of their supply chains. Although media asset management is moving to the cloud, this transition will be gradual, particularly for users relying on large and complex legacy systems.

Publish, Monetize & Consume

Publishing, playing out and distributing linear and non-linear content for consumption by audiences is now changing significantly with the adoption of the cloud. The usage of the technology in this part of the content-supply chain presents similar benefits like flexibility and efficiency. Furthermore, media companies are using cloud UIs to better suit viewing habits and improve consumers’ experience.

Publish

As OTT and on-demand content offerings continue to disrupt the traditional linear TV playout model and the number of distribution outlets increases, the adoption of cloud enables end-users to deliver content to hundreds of distribution platforms across traditional broadcast, OTT platforms and mobile devices. Cloud playout also allows broadcasters to rollout new channels quickly on an OPEX basis rather than investing in hardware.

End-users – continuously seeking new sources of flexibility and scale – have recently started to explore new cloud-based playout solutions, which enable broadcasters to quickly introduce new channels (e.g. pop-up channels during a campaign or an event) or adapt existing channels with a minimized lead time. The ability to implement changes on-the-go helps broadcasters to react to new market conditions. Moreover, cloud playout enables end-users to localize content and deliver personalized programming and ads based on viewers’ interest and location. As media companies continue to enter new markets, playout from the cloud provides end-users with flexibility to test new channels and evaluate their viability in new regions with local audiences.

In 2016, Discovery began adopting cloud-based playout to streamline its delivery of both linear channels and streaming services – and to reduce costs across physical infrastructure, power consumption and staff. In May 2018, Discovery announced that it would shut its West London playout hub because of transitioning all playout functions into the cloud. Instead of relying on (or getting locked into) a single cloud vendor, Discovery has chosen a multi-cloud strategy by using cloud services of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. While Discovery Channel in the US is already fully run from the cloud, Discovery-owned Eurosport still continues to playout from Paris because of latency problems. However, the facility in Paris will also transition to the cloud in the coming years, according to Discovery.

Globecast also provides cloud-based playout and media management services to broadcasters. In September 2018, Globecast and Virgin Media launched Virgin TV Ultra HD – the UK’s first dedicated UHD entertainment channel. In the project, Globecast supplied both cloud-based playout and media management services making up an end-to-end solution, which is a hybrid of public and private cloud and works completely in UHD.

At IBC 2018, Red Bee Media showcased a cloud solution to use uncompressed video over IP. The solution, launched commercially in 2019, uses public cloud for OTT services and private cloud for linear playout, because linear playout still involves lots of complexity and bandwidth. At IBC 2019, Red Bee Media showcased its new media centric hybrid cloud environment, which is designed to streamline media production, playout, processing and distribution services for global broadcasters. The new cloud-ready platform is co-developed with Cisco and 7fivefive. Later in 2019, Red Bee Media announced that it had signed a multi-year contract with Channel 4 to deliver dual-site playout and access services for all six of Channel 4’s channels.

In 2018, Harmonic announced that Fuji Television Network had deployed Harmonic’s cloud playout solution for its SMART OTT service, to simplify workflow and increase monetization opportunities with Harmonic’s cloud-native VOS 360 media processing software. As a result, Fuji TV was able to delve into additional types of monetization for its OTT channels.

ITV started using the AWS cloud platform for content upload, storage, transcoding, media asset management, packaging and protection of its ITV Hub in January 2018. According to a case study published by AWS, ITV deployed the new cloud platform in one month achieving improved agility, shorter time to market and lower costs in delivering new services. In April 2019, ITV announced that it had migrated its operational analytics workflows onto the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to reach scale and improved agility for its on-demand ITV Hub. According to Andy Burnett, Director of Online Technology and Operations at ITV, ITV’s analytics systems are now built around the “Google Big Data suite” – including BigQuery, DataFlow and Pub/Sub – installed in just three months.

While continuing with a hybrid cloud strategy, ITV openly expressed that it chose Google Cloud as the preferred platform thanks to its architecture and “the concept of NoOps”. This refers to a trend among cloud service providers, who are increasingly expanding their role in providing infrastructure management services, which are usually overseen by the end-user’s own IT department. By outsourcing these services to the cloud service provider, ITV did not have to build a 24/7 operations team and instead it could better focus on driving better operations in the ad business and improve marketing effectiveness based on the single view of customer data flowing from the Google Big Data suite. Interestingly, moving to the cloud has also helped ITV to attract talent in data science and engineering, because the new engineers have had the chance to “shape the clean slate” in the absence of big legacy systems and to use the new cloud tools, Burnett said.

In December 2019, AWS and FOX Corporation announced that they had signed a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement to create the first single cloud platform, which can deliver both traditional broadcast and direct-to-consumer streaming services. The platform will deliver all FOX’s sports, news and entertainment content to multi-channel video programming distributors, over 200 affiliate stations and to OTT providers. In the project, FOX will also use the first AWS Local Zone infrastructure, placing compute, storage and database services closer to end-users to allow ultra-low latency. FOX will also leverage AWS analytics services, including Amazon Kinesis. Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon said “the platform will serve as the nerve center for FOX distribution and operation capabilities, supporting the most demanding needs of live broadcast television production and distribution with plenty of capacity.”

Over the past few years, localizing services has become increasingly important as media companies continue to enter new markets. In the OTT space, DAZN and Channel 4 have turned to M2A Media and deployed its AWS Cloud-hosted M2A Live Streaming solution, which allows them to customize a live event for a specific audience based on live audience size, local bandwidth, DRMs, frame rates and devices. Marina Kalkanis, CEO at M2A Media, said: “We are also adding regionalization of live streams. For example, in addition to multi-track audio and multi-language subtitles, we are adding features to splice regionalized content into a live stream and serve a tailored stream to each region.” In September 2019, DAZN also launched a virtual production facility in Spain, powered by a NEP production platform. The virtual facility enables DAZN to produce more localized content related to its premium sports rights in Spain. Earlier in 2019, DAZN had already opened a virtual development center in Amsterdam.

These examples illustrate, how major cloud service providers’ media-specific capabilities have significantly grown over the past few years as a result of their heavy investments in media-specific offerings, particularly in Manage and Publish. The growth has been both organic and inorganic and it has been consistent with broadcast and media organizations’ increasing demand for cloud services.

Monetize

Even though our data shows that end-users still see Monetize as one of the least likely supply chain blocks to deploy cloud-based technology, the adoption of cloud can significantly increase monetization opportunities. For example, the development of AI/ML offerings – enabling more accurate monetization – has represented a differentiator for cloud service providers as the media and broadcast sector increasingly adopts this technology. According to IABM data, most end-users plan to deploy AI/ML using cloud service providers’ functionalities; therefore, this is an important area of future development.

Amazon launched its first media-specific cloud-based toolbox, AWS Elemental Media Services, in 2017. One of the key services of the toolbox is AWS Media Tailor, a monetization service consisting of dynamic ad insertion, targeted advertising and viewer behavior analytics. In 2018, Accedo launched a targeted advertising solution for Augmented Reality (AR) using the API of AWS Elemental Media Tailor.

By leveraging the cloud service provider’s media-specific capability, Accedo was able to make its service even more specific and target premium segments.

Netflix has been using the AWS cloud services since it first entered the market. Today, Netflix uses AWS for nearly all of its computing, monetization and storage needs, including databases, analytics and recommendations engines. According to Amazon, Netflix is nowadays using over 100,000 AWS server instances.

In September 2019, Imagine Communications announced that it had made the core monetization function of its Targeted Delivery portfolio available as an OTT Monetization Service, powered by AWS. The cloud-based solution provides simplified browser-management and supports dynamic ad insertion (DAI) for linear and OTT services. In practice, this means ensuring that ads are dynamically aligned with audience demographics and the ability to replace ads in existing workflows – critical when maximizing revenue against content. In the project, Imagine is collaborating with MobiTV to incorporate content management capabilities into live connected TV and OTT video services.

At the end of 2019, ProSiebenSat.1 also announced that it had selected AWS as its primary cloud provider for all of its broadcast and digital media businesses, production companies and e-commerce platforms. According to ProSiebenSat.1, the adoption of AWS cloud improves the time to market of new applications and incorporates AWS’ advanced analytics services as part of its agile software development practices. This will help ProSiebenSat.1 to derive more value from its growing consumer data platforms and to improve the viewing experience for its 45 million households across Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Deploying Amazon SageMaker, ProSiebenSat.1 expects be able tailor to advertising to viewers, enhance personalization and predict weeks in advance how many impressions an advertisement will generate.

In January 2019, OpenX, a programmatic advertising company, signed a five year deal with the Google Cloud platform and moved its operations entirely into the Google Cloud. With a cloud-based infrastructure, OpenX can better focus on its people-based marketing (PBM) strategy, in which its ad targeting is focused on identified or anonymous individuals, allowing a brand to better develop a relationship with selected customers. In December 2019, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent for OpenX for its “system and methods for using a revenue value index to score impressions for users for ad placement”, referring to the company’s cloud-based technology allowing people-based marketing.

In 2019, Viacom turned to Google Cloud to improve monetization of content from its legacy TV networks (e.g. Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV and BET) and its newly acquired OTT platforms like Pluto TV. Viacom’s Intelligence Content Discovery Platform now uses AI on Google Cloud, which enables better optimization of the viewing experience by identifying commercials and personalizing them. This helps Viacom to better locate and understand the context of the content, while improving the efficiency of distribution strategies to consumers.

Other media companies using Google Cloud include for example CBS and Fubo (OTT service). Responding to the competition from AWS and Microsoft Azure, Google is also strengthening its media-specific service offering. According to Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud business, the media and entertainment business belongs to the six new verticals that are the focus of Google’s cloud efforts.

Personalization of ads is important for monetization. For example, the CNN platform provides different ads based of the interests of viewers. This is a complex process that targets the users with the right video. Advertisers bid for a “good user” in a process called “real time bidding”. The highest paying company that matches compatibility and verification criteria with the viewers wins the bid and shows its ads. This process is called “programmatic video advertising” and it happens between the time the user clicks the play button and when the company is presenting the ad. More than two-thirds of US digital display ad spending is programmatic, and its adoption is growing at a fast pace.

In December 2019, IRIS.TV announced that it had integrated consumer information from Oracle Data Cloud’s Grapshot, which has been used for targeting digital display advertising. The company launched its contextual ad targeting systems earlier last year, which Oracle’s Data Cloud’s Contextual Intelligence now complements. Contextual video targeting helps media companies differentiate their video inventory, while marketers will be able to execute campaigns transparently through their existing demand-side platform partners with campaigns that can scale across specific video content verticals (e.g. sports, politics).

Content creators and distributors face challenges such as how to track and manage content rights, royalties and payments. The industry has seen a transformation from traditional, linear programming with its flat fees and simple usage terms to multidimensional rights and complex payment terms. Videntifier, a content detection technology supplier, joined FADEL, a cloud-based provider of intellectual property rights and royalty management software. The collaboration provides an integrated compliance monitoring service that enables broadcasters to track usage of content.

NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, has launched an OTT channel, JSTV-i, to broadcast content online. NHK required a platform to provide secure online payment facilities with multiplatform, multi-device and multi-currency capabilities. Paywizard with its MyPayWizard e-wallet is the cloud solution that the broadcaster chose for its payment mechanism. NBCUniversal has also adopted Paywizard as its payment solution to manage subscriptions on multiple platforms and devices.

These examples illustrate how end-users are seeking to adopt new business models to remain relevant to their audiences – by personalizing content and ads. The complexity stemming from viewers’ increased expectations, shifting viewing habits and demand for content delivery to a growing list of devices has created a need for more flexible monetization models and cloud-based, cross-platform managed services.

Consume

Cloud TV refers to a flexible television option that enables users to take their shows on the go. It has been defined as the latest trend in the television viewership experience. As content in “the cloud” is accessible by users from any location through an internet-connected device, Cloud TV allows consumers to watch live in-home streaming and anywhere-access to a new television series or favorite movies.

Recently, Pay-TV operators have embraced a cloud-based user interface (UI) model that allows them to quickly respond to changes in viewing habits and deliver to new viewing platforms. The user experience (UX) is delivered by a user interface (UI). A Cloud UI can support the full end-device ecosystem, including tablets and mobiles. The ability to present a different UI to each device gives more options to Pay-TV operators to better suit viewing habits. It provides UX choice for each device or user and a flexibility that brings greater customer satisfaction, by providing personalization and content recommendations.

In September 2017, IRIS.TV joined the Google Cloud Technology Partner Program. The collaboration enables the delivery of the right videos to the right audience continuously and in real time, and helps traditional media companies to create great content that allows them to attract longer engagement and so drive revenue.

Another example of a personalized experience is the Kaltura Cloud TV Platform, a modular video platform supporting cloud TV services to over 50 million viewers globally. In practice, Kaltura’s solution features personalized multi-screen access to linear, on-demand and time-shifted TV as well as third party content. In September 2018, Viacom18’s VOOT Cloud TV service announced that it was using Kaltura to support its growth by boosting engagement and interactivity.

In September 2019, Kaltura announced that its Kaltura Cloud TV technology is supporting the launch of Vodafone TV in Greece, Portugal and Romania. Previously, Kaltura has supported the launch of Vodafone TV service in Spain in 2015 and in Italy 2017. According to industry experts, by adopting a single cloud-based platform, Vodafone is able to launch Vodafone TV in a new country in about seven months. Kaltura has also been active in Russia and Kazakhstan, where it partners with Beeline TV, a brand of Amsterdam-based Veon.

Cloud TV service providers are increasingly looking at AI and machine learning to further improve UX. At IBC 2018, Kaltura showcased its Targeted TV initiative, which aims at further augmenting its Cloud TV platform through AI technology. In April 2019, the company formed partnerships with TV data consulting company Dativa and multiscreen-focused, software engineering firm 3SS. The collaboration has enabled Kaltura to use AI to analyze the high volume of API calls crossing its Cloud TV platform every day and to create user segments that operators can then target with advertising and content. Tal Weinblum, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Kaltura said: “We believe these collaborations are essential for the era of Cognitive TV to be realized and we are committed to be early movers in this area.”

At IBC 2019, Simplestream demonstrated a similar Cloud TV service specifically targeting telecom operators. Its new Telco TV enables telcos and broadcasters to rapidly ramp up TV services across multiple territories and screens. The solution includes multi-channel live streaming, an automated catch-up feature, branded apps for major platforms, VOD, Cloud DVR and DRM downloads for offline viewing. At the conference, Simplestream also showcased new features of its Sports Video Platform targeting the sports OTT market. Later in September 2019, the company revealed that it had built an “accessible” video platform and a website for Channel 4’s online coverage of Para Sport and Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. The solution can handle up to 16 concurrent live streams and 10 adaptive bitrate encoding (ABR) profiles, while providing live event scheduling, the management of news articles and video metadata. The website – which is already live with VOD functions – is integrated with Channel 4’s Freewheel and Adobe Analytics platforms. According to Pete Andrews, Head of Sport at Channel 4, the time difference between some of the Paralympic events in Tokyo 2020 and the UK means that Channel 4’s digital offering will be “more important than ever”. By adopting Simplesteam’s Cloud TV solution the broadcaster was able to ramp up the live and VOD offering at a fraction of the cost and time, while allocating more resources to editorial features.

Voice UI was one of the biggest trends at IBC 2017 and 2018. From Google Home to Amazon Alexa, people are becoming more and more accustomed to voice interactivity. TV and on-demand viewing are not seen as different; consumers are beginning to expect whatever platforms they watch content on to support voice functionalities. The advantage of voice is that it removes the need to understand the UI of a platform. Voice offers an easy way to locate what users want to watch, rather than looking for a search field or a filter button. Moreover, voice creates a much more “human” feel with the platforms. The difference between UX delivered with UI and Voice UI is that the former is about personalization of content, while the latter is about personalization of the overall experience.

Even though voice UI is still at an early stage, voice is becoming increasingly important in content discovery and engagement. However, one of the remaining challenges is that users interact with the voice function in different ways and use different words, even though they are looking for the same movie or TV series. As a result, it requires a more complex set of metadata.

In 2018, Vonage, a cloud communication service for consumers and businesses, acquired TokBox, a PaaS company, which has a platform called OpenTok. The OpenTok Voice UI is already used by Facebook and Fox Sports to bring live videos to their audiences. Facebook’s aim was to move closer to the live broadcasting space and allow users to interact with live videos, expressing their emotions through emoji and text-based responses. Passive watching doesn’t satisfy the attention spans of today’s audience but, with its OpenTok deployment, Facebook has been able to make it easier for consumers to share their emotions and co-consume broadcasts with friends. Traditional broadcasters are responding to this trend. Fox Sports was one of the first to adopt TokBox; engagement is key to broadcasters. Fox Sports wanted to bring live video to college football and connect fans with their heroes by enabling the audience to talk to players and coaches. Thanks to the adoption of OpenTok, the broadcaster incorporated live feeds from the studio with real-time video streams from fans to create an interactive online video talk show. Sceenic’s Watch Together, the winner of the Dragons’ Den competition at the IABM 2018 Annual International and Business Conference, enables broadcasters to allow viewers separated even by continents to watch programs together.

In 2018, Comcast enabled fans of NBC’s America’s Got Talent to vote for their favourite acts via their X1 voice remote controls. Comcasts sees X1 voice UI as a way to keep people subscribing in an era where users are cutting the cord and seeking less expensive TV bundles. The media company let people interact with NBC’s The Voice, NBC’s Olympic coverage and the World Cup, on Fox and Comcast-owned Telemundo, via X1.

Some broadcasters remain reserved when it comes to the potential of voice control. According to Nicky Birch, Executive Producer at BBC R&D, who spoke to IBC365, a major issue related to voice control is that by removing screens and other devices from the voice user interface (UI), the discoverability of content becomes limited, because people don’t know that content exists when not seeing the options on a screen in front of them. In addition, by partnering with voice services operators like Amazon and Google, broadcasters would have to allow them to control all of the important consumer UI – and related data. Nevertheless, BBC R&D has been experimenting with voice content for some time and two skills have so far released on Alexa: The Inspection Chamber (enabling a viewer to choose their own ending in a sci fi experience) and The Unfortunates (an experimental art house non-linear radio 3 play). Moreover, the BBC is currently prototyping a solution – using live semantic analysis – to utilize lengthier two-way conversations between the voice speaker and the viewer. The prototype, called Five Days Five Dates, enables the user to become friend of a young woman, who is set up on five dates with five different people. The user’s task is to advise through voice control the friend on actions she should take on each date.

Connect, Store & Support

In Connect, Store and Support, the cloud can dramatically speed up media workflows and reduce operating costs in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Connect

Media organizations are increasingly adopting a hybrid cloud workflow that uses a combination of public and private cloud as well as on-premise storage and compute resources. In a hybrid model, acceleration technologies from vendors such as Aspera and Signiant enable workflows leveraging off-site resources. For example, Channel 4’s All4 VOD platform uses cloud-based technology from IBM-owned Aspera to securely and reliably move content across on-premise and multi-cloud environments at high speed. In practice, media companies can deliver large files from on-premise or cloud storage out to their clients and partners and invite them to upload content directly to their storage locations. BT Sport is using Aspera’s direct-to-cloud transport technology in its high-speed transfer, replication and automation platform for its live sport production workflows. 

Cloud providers are increasingly turning to the broadcast and media industry by offering solutions that are specifically designed for transferring large video files in hybrid and multi cloud environments. In 2015, AWS acquired Elemental to grow its video solutions with the AWS Cloud platform, and the first outcome of the merger was the launch of five new media services in 2017. One of these services, AWS Elemental MediaConnect, allows users to upload live video to transfer instantly as well as to use the internet instead of fiber to transfer streams. Early adopters of this service include Discovery, ITV, UK-based infrastructure and broadcast facility Arqiva and US-based sports network Pac-12.

In November 2019, AWS announced that Network 10 – one of Australia’s largest television networks – had adopted AWS Media Services to support its video transport structure for remote production in South Africa for Network 10’s upcoming season of a reality TV series and to improve the streaming delivery for its live-streamed sports and shows, including Australian Survivor, MasterChef Australia and The Bachelor. Network 10 is one of the first media companies in Australia to use AWS Elemental MediaConnect. According to the broadcaster, by deploying AWS’s cloud solution it will reduce its production turn around window from overnight to less than two hours – and in some cases to only a few minutes.

According to the expert interviews conducted for our Adapt Report in 2019, all end-users said that they have a strong preference for multi-cloud workflows in order to avoid lock-in to one single cloud vendor and leverage best-of-breed solutions. A multi-cloud infrastructure also provides a higher degree of storage independence, which is critical for many buyers who need to transfer large data volumes quickly.

However, our data shows that most end-users see that optimal multi-cloud workflows are not achievable today due to the cost of moving content between different cloud service providers’ environments. The so-called egress charges represent a constraint to implementing multi-cloud workflows as suggested by IABM research. In broadcast and media, egress charges may be substantial given the high data rates of content, particularly as the industry moves to immersive formats.

Most end-users are addressing this issue by using separate cloud service providers, side by side, for different sets of workflows (e.g. video and data-driven workflows). Most buyers are thus trying to avoid or at least minimize the impact of egress charges on their cost models. Most participants in our Adapt Report project remarked that this approach may change as the cloud market becomes more saturated and integration may come to represent a tool for differentiation for cloud service providers.

Cloud service providers and cloud-based suppliers have launched an initiative to try to address the issue of egress charges. In September 2018, a group of ten cloud and networking companies launched the Bandwidth Alliance; an initiative to discount or waive data transfer fees for shared customers through a common agreement. As of October 2019, the Bandwidth Alliance had nearly doubled the number of its members to 18 partners, including many of the major cloud service providers such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud and Tencent Cloud.

When it comes addressing buyers’ concerns related to high data transfer fees (e.g. egress costs) and storage independence, new vendor technologies such as Signiant’s cloud-based file transfer solutions have become increasingly important. These technologies allow buyers to choose different storage types for different use cases and to transfer content between them.

In February 2019, Google announced that it had acquired cloud migration start-up Alooma, whose data pipeline technology enables buyers to move their data from multiple sources into one data warehouse. According to Google, Alooma’s expertise in both open-source and enterprise databases adds new migration capabilities within the Google Cloud Platform.

In September 2019, Microsoft acquired a cloud migration start-up, Movere. Its platform enables buyers to assess how data centre tools are used and then recommends the best options to move into the public cloud. Some media companies like 21^st Century Fox are already using Movere’s solution to plan and optimize their cloud migrations. Prior to the acquisition, Movere was certified as a Microsoft Gold Partner and an AWS Advance ISV Partner for Migration.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is strongly intertwined with the cloud, and it is increasingly used to solve more challenging technical problems such as compressing video files without compromising quality. At IBC 2016, Harmonic unveiled its EyeQ technology that uses AVC-based codecs and computer vision to measure video quality in real time. According to Harmonic, the system is able to reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 50%. In 2017, Netflix demonstrated a new compression process, dubbed Dynamic Optimizer, that it claims leverages AI to better compress video frames.

At IBC 2018, V-Nova introduced its PERSEUS Plus and Pro video compression solutions, which deploy AI. V-Nova already has a wide range of customers, some of which are satellite firms such as MeaSat and NovelSat. Bitmovin also introduced an AI-powered encoding technology in 2018, and its customers already include Sling, ProSiebenSat.1, FuboTV, RTL as well as an OTT service iflix, which uses Bitmovin’s encoding to deliver TV shows, movies and sport in HD video over low bandwidth mobile networks across the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

Store

In Store, the cloud enables the use of more flexible and efficient hybrid storage infrastructures as well as elasticity to handle fluctuations in media companies’ capacity needs. With media assets continually growing bigger, cloud storage is transitioning to a hybrid deployment model, shifting as much as possible of variable capacity to the cloud. Moreover, the adoption of cloud-based architectures has enabled collaborative workflows in a completely new manner – a team can be disparately located and still work on the same file.

The leading public cloud storage service providers today include AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and pricing varies by volume, region and incremental costs for individual operations (e.g. transfer, retrieval). Both AWS and Azure pricing depends on the storage capacity used. Google Cloud Storage initially launched to compete with market leader AWS’ Amazon Glacier cloud storage, which is designed for data that is retrieved in 3-4 hours. Amazon Glacier – targeted for files in long-term, passive archives – is less expensive than Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), which retrieves data in real time and thus is more suitable for storage of files in frequent use. Google Cloud Storage Nearline – one of four services in the public Google Cloud Platform – is specifically intended for archiving, backup and disaster recovery. Nearline storage media, when on the shelf, are immune to infections by online viruses, Trojans and worms, because the media files are physically disconnected from networks, computers, services and the internet.

When it comes to media-specific services in Store, AWS MediaStore is a solution specifically optimized for media file storage. As mentioned above, many end-users are already using Amazon’s S3 and Glacier storage solutions for storing and archiving media assets. As buyers’ investment in original content continues to increase rapidly, the need to be able to move files quickly to archives at a lower cost has become essential. As a result of this, major cloud service providers have started offering acceleration solutions to allow buyers to move their data into backup storage buckets during off hours to keep the network freed up when creative staff are at work. These acceleration solutions also address the network latency and congestion that typically occur when moving large data sets to/from cloud storage – being the key for disaster recovery as well.

While end-users are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their storage decisions thanks to the abundance of options, they are looking to have cloud and on-premise storage tied seamlessly together in hybrid architectures. Accordingly, end-users are now demanding more intelligent content storage and lifecycle management solutions. For example, AVID NEXIS Cloudspaces, a cloud-based service designed for small- and medium-size sports, news and post-production organizations, enables end-users to quickly back up or free up storage space to keep content production moving forward.

At NAB 2019, Masstech showcased FlashNet, a video-centric storage management solution providing a single control layer for an entire hybrid cloud storage ecosystem of the end-user. The new solution can intelligently store media assets in a private cloud, multiple public clouds or a hybrid configuration (including existing on-premise storage). Mike Palmer, CTO at Masstech, told TV Technology: “Allowing the integration of multiple private and public clouds into a single name-space, with the option to include existing or new on-premise storage, provides the highest degrees of flexibility, durability, efficiency and cost-savings. This is true object storage, without ties to specific hardware or cloud vendors. Our support of multiple private cloud systems and all major public clouds provide genuine freedom of choice of storage providers.”

In September 2019, Masstech introduced its new storage management solution, Kumulate Orchestrator, which enables end-users to automate multi-format and multi-vendor file transformations across unlimited storage tiers (e.g. tape to cloud) or from legacy systems to the next generation storage platforms in a hybrid cloud environment. In practice, the solution streamlines metadata interchange between third-party systems and metadata enrichment services to help media companies to get even more value from their existing assets – throughout their lifecycle.

AI-powered cloud storage solutions are also emerging onto the market, which promise to collect and analyze important data points about storage performance as well as to proactively spot potential issues. For example, Cloudfirst has developed a Software-Defined-Archive (SDA) platform using AI, which is applicable to on-premise, private, public and hybrid deployments.

Some broadcasters and content owners are still concerned about using public cloud storage because they fear that a failure in communication and connectivity will prevent access to content. This risk can be mitigated by mechanisms to ensure internet access with different paths and operators. Other common concerns are also related to security, when content is not stored on premise. However, many industry experts highlight how large public cloud providers can actually provide better security due to the scale of their operations.

Support

In Support, cloud computing enables instant delivery, virtualized workflows and top end security. Cloud-based monitoring and platform management services are also increasingly popular among media companies.

In the course of past decade, cloud service providers started to offer services to alleviate the burden related to managing servers (i.e. managed servers), while the cloud customer remained responsible for scalability and availability. AWS Lambda is an example of a serverless compute service, which is also charged through a pay-as-you-go model.

As media companies continue to move their operations to the cloud, they also get access to a wide range of cloud computing services. For example, the BBC has adopted a cloud computing approach to be better positioned to respond to changes in audience demand and overall market conditions. According to Mark Ransby, Technical Architect at BBC, cloud computing has allowed the BBC to commission new capacity within minutes and release features faster, dramatically reducing the time to deploy new functionalities.

As end-users continue to transition to multi- and hybrid cloud environments, they increasingly need new types of support services due to the sheer complexity of multi-cloud management, including use cases such as orchestration, monitoring and billing. Accordingly, end-users are looking into providers that offer tools to manage, monitor and orchestrate workflows in different cloud environments without having to use different portals that are specific to cloud vendors.

One of the first multi-cloud management platforms in the market was RightScale, which was established in 2007. In September 2018, RightScale was acquired by Flexera, a software asset management firm. Over the past six years, there has been a series of acquisitions targeting cloud management platform firms: RedHat acquired ManageIQ in 2012, while Cisco acquired another CMP firm, Cloupia. In 2013, Dell acquired Enstratius, whereas Oracle acquired Nimbula, a provider of CMP. The same year, CSC acquired ServiceMesh, another CMP firm. In 2014, Citrix acquired ScaleXtreme, a company running a CMP designed for multi-cloud environments. These acquisitions reflect rapidly increasing demand for unified cloud management solutions.

However, as modern cloud applications are built from containers and microservices, the focus of cloud management is gradually shifting from infrastructure-as-a-service (i.e. IaaS) to containers-as-a-service (i.e. CaaS), led by Kubernetes, an open-source management platform for containerized workloads and services. Google’s Anthos – a Kubernetes-based suite of Google Cloud Platform components – is an interesting, recent development in multi-cloud management, because it allows end-users to run applications on-premise, in Google’s public cloud as well as to manage workloads on third-party clouds such as Azure and AWS.

Morpheus is a unified multi-cloud orchestration platform that connects developers to self-service infrastructure and offers cost comparisons between various cloud infrastructures and resources. Other multi-cloud management platforms offering cloud spend optimization and container management services are Scalr and Embotics. The major cloud service providers also offer similar services. For example, Microsoft Azure Cost Management is a cloud spend monitoring application that helps end-users to monitor, allocate and optimize cloud costs for the Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

With the emergence of OTT and direct-to-consumer (DTC) business models, networks are becoming larger, more complicated and more distributed. This makes it difficult to see across systems and locations and convert raw data to real, actionable knowledge. Accordingly, there is an increasingly wide range of AI-driven cloud monitoring solutions available on the market. Using AI reporting, media companies can have streaming quality interruptions fixed in minutes instead of hours. For example, Conviva’s Ecosystem Module – an AI-powered notification system – dispatches alerts to partner CDNs by itself, which enables quality issues to be repaired immediately as well as providing analysis the overall performance.

Many OTT providers, including incumbent broadcasters launching their own OTT streaming services, are adopting a cloud-based monitoring process that enables issues to be addressed proactively. Touchstream introduced the second iteration of its StreamE2E end-to-end service for the OTT live stream monitoring market at IBC 2018. With Touchstream’s solution, the company says OTT service providers and video distributors can have a clearer picture of their entire workflow including data from a variety of third-party components. This enables the user to visualize delivery performance and better determine the root cause of issues interrupting the viewer experience. Sky, Comcast, Viaplay and Seven West Media are already using Touchstream’s cloud-based monitoring solution.

Over the past five years, cyber-attacks on TV5Monde, Sony and Netflix have made media companies augment their cyber security capabilities and made them a top level priority. The growth of the connected economy (e.g. IoT), access to open internet and a deeper level of collaboration between many different technology suppliers and service providers have increased media companies’ risks of cyber-attacks. End-users’ need for speed and flexibility mean that new products and smart devices are put into operation increasingly fast – often on a test-basis – while proper security aspects and measures may get bypassed. Moreover, while cloud-based platforms enable collaboration from different locations, people working from home and from different regions may end up being potential security threats.

When it comes to security and intrusion detection, Cloudfare announced in January 2020 that it will collaborate with a non-profit organization, Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) – accredited by the US Federal Elections Commission – on cybersecurity products, services and information for the 2020 US Presidential campaigns to help different political organizations to better defend against cyberattacks and election interference.