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October 12, 2022
Posted October 1, 2022

Planning a Move? Considerations for Live Production in the Cloud

author
Adrian Pennington

Video headed to cloud in 2022.

Let’s look at five of the most common challenges streaming and broadcast productions face when making that move, courtesy of broadcast technology specialist Vizrt.

READ MORE: Mistakes to Avoid When Taking Live Video Production to the Cloud

Mistake #1: Lack of Security

In 2015, Sony Pictures found out the hard way what it means to have an IT security breach. Not all security issues are as high impact or high profile, but security concerns remain one of the most common challenges that organizations face in moving to the cloud.

The Media & Entertainment industry is content driven — having access and the rights to leverage content is how value is generated, so trusting a third party to protect and secure data assets is what Vizrt calls an unpalatable reality.

How to avoid it: Identity and verification, access control, privacy security, data recovery and transparent credentials all need to be considered when selecting partners for cloud-based activities.

Mistake #2: Not Considering Cost

Industry analyst Gartner estimates that worldwide investment on public cloud services will top $364 billion in 2022. Yet early adopters of cloud-based architecture soon found the costs they encountered were prohibitive and rapidly redesigned their deployments. Indeed, analysts Andreessen Horowitz estimate that poor optimization of cloud services could be responsible for wiping $100 billion off the valuation of just the top 50 public software companies currently using cloud infrastructure.

READ MORE: Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 6.3% in 2020 (Gartner)



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How to avoid it: Selecting a design that is right for the use case and look to establish a sustainable balance between cloud and on-premises deployments all help in protecting an organization from unwanted additional costs.

Mistake #3: Lack of Expertise in Cloud Deployment

The shortage of cloud talent is the largest barrier to deploying emerging technologies, according to a 2021 Andreessen Horowitz survey. For many M&E organizations, the migration from SDI to IP has been challenging as incumbent skillsets needed to be adapted and aligned with new, more IT-centric talent and skills.

READ MORE: The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox (Andreessen Horowitz)

How to avoid it: The step to the cloud stretches that resource pool once again, with the need to evolve beyond a dev-ops model to one that enables versioning, configuration, orchestration, and operations across a multi-vendor landscape.

Mistake #4: High Latency

In a remote and elastic compute model, like the cloud there are several factors that can introduce delay to something like a live video production.

“You cannae change the laws of physics, Jim,” a memorable Star Trek character was known to say. In this case, the speed of light. It simply cannot move through glass fiber any faster than it currently does, and therefore takes time to get point A (perhaps a sports field in Amsterdam) to point B, a remote computing facility (perhaps a data center in Dublin).

Here’s where Vizrt promotes its NDI solution, which works with compressed video. It says technical developments like NDU have all helped to manage latency, be that data or control signal latency, choosing the right codec and transport protocol to the clever use of synchronization and well-designed workflows. With the right approach, latency need not be a showstopper.

Mistake #5: Lack of Data

With so many buzzwords and a lack of a well-thumbed playbook, the cloud has earned a reputation for being complex and costly. It can be helpful to focus in on the desired outcome, rather than the deployment method.

“If scalability and flexibility are required, then cloud can play a powerful part in a content pipeline. But you’ll likely want to control costs, ensure quality and security, and enhance reliability.

Live production over IP for example relies on understanding the creative promise of the cloud but also how to mitigate the risk.

You’ll want to “tap the commercial potential of the cloud and not get caught as some consultant’s ill-conceived architectural opus,” says the vendor.

“The five mistakes listed here have been made countless times so that you can now avoid them and capitalize on the phenomenal scale and versatility that cloud solutions present.”

READ MORE: Live Production in the Cloud (Vizrt)

Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here.

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