Media Facilities Consider Cloud Management

As financial pressures on media facilities and broadcasters heighten a quick shift to and consideration of 'cloud-based management facilities' has emerged in the industry.
Indeed the tough economic climate has created the right conditions for a quicker than expected shift to cloud-based content management systems however it does not come without problems and some still question whether it has a place in the industry.
A year ago many people were not ready to accept that their content should be housed away from their facility but pressures on large investment means facilities and broadcasters has led them to look for other solutions.
One of these solutions has been Cloud Management. Multiple vendors showed Cloud services at IBC ranging across the chain from storage as a service to disaster recovery, transcoding and QC, graphics, desktop editing apps, news production, high-speed file transfers and logging and metadata management.
According to an article by IBC storage as a service is a good business model, not just because it makes economic sense but because it gives them the flexibility to expand and contract the amount of storage required by the business and therefore enhances their responsiveness to the market.
Although Cloud management is becoming common practice for media facilities security of content is a significant problem and truly agnostic web streaming engines have not yet made it to market.
Richard Thomson, Managing Director of production powerhouse Wall to Wall Television said: "At the moment it feels safer to put it on tape.We are still examining whether Cloud is going to be the game changer it’s hyped up to be or a promise without a practical application."
(LB)