CLOUD CITY

As cloud technology holds the reigns in the media industry, we analyse how this advancement has proven its mettle over the years

- ANISHA GAKHAR

Cloud technology has been anchoring content operations since times immemorial now— right from creation and transformation, to distribution and archival. It has empowered broadcasters, studios and service providers with unprecedented scalability and on-demand processing infrastructure. Content providers like Netflix, Amazon and Spotify effectively employ cloud computing, which, in turn, allows them to provide tons of content to users across the globe—with revenues multiplying every second. The Video on Demand (VOD) offering is at the forefront of the M&E industry, adding thousands of users on an everyday basis.

Today’s consumers of content expect flexible choices and custom-made experiences. In addition, with spikes and surges in viewership that have to be dealt with in real time, media companies have to accommodate the changing consumer dynamics and patterns. The on-demand characteristics of cloud computing provide the levels of scalability and flexibility that the M&E sector needs to cost-effectively meet volatile demand, automatically spinning servers up and down as demand ebbs and flows.