Here’s how cloud media services are assisting businesses in managing content operations across multiple platforms

By Bhavesh Goswami, Founder and CEO, CloudThat

After a brief decline in 2020, the global entertainment and media industry is poised for strong growth. Think about how frequently we access a Spotify album, a Netflix movie, or a YouTube video. Media streaming sites are growing increasingly popular with Netflix alone reaching a new high of 223 million paid customers in the third quarter of 2022, according to Statista. The entertainment business market is anticipated to reach $2.6 trillion in sales by 2023, up 23% from the current level; with cloud taking the center stage.

Earlier, the primary purpose of cloud storage for media firms was as a disaster recovery archive, but they shied away from using it for pre-release content because there were no security or insurance obligations to retain it on-site. However, things have changed since then and resource-intensive tasks are now effortless, thanks to advancements in cloud technology.

Today, media firms throughout the world are capitalizing on the cloud and adapting their business models to offer fast and seamless digital content delivery to their users. The applications of the cloud in the media industry include video and audio streaming, audio recording, asset management, archive storage, and much more

A report from Maximizemarketresearch.com stated that Cloud Media and Entertainment Content Management Market size is expected to reach USD 26.28 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 10.56%. The main participants in this market include renowned media companies like Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, YouTube, and Netflix.

Netflix uses AWS cloud video streaming solutions for a wide range of storing, streaming, and hosting services. These include video processing, video encoding and transcoding, recommendation engine, databases, and analytics. It recently revealed to spend over USD 100 crores on cloud computing and streaming services through 2023.

Spotify on the other hand is an example of a cloud-based audio streaming service. It streams music over the internet via an audio cloud player and allows users to store songs, create saved playlists, and listen in offline mode.

Discovery and Walt Disney Television also moved their media supply chain to the cloud in order to autonomously provision and scale resources for linear broadcast and video-on-demand (VOD) content, digital MVPD distribution, and syndication. In fact, Discovery was the first media company to move its entire media operation, from production to distribution, into the AWS Cloud.

At the most basic level, cloud computing offers the scalability and flexibility required to handle advanced and complex workflows for media streaming. It allows media enterprises to manage, distribute, and protect digital content and also offers a more cost-effective platform for fulfilling unpredictable spikes in demands. The virtualized servers and applications in the cloud serve as resource pools that can be provisioned and reconfigured as needs change.

Cloud-based distribution allows for real-time feed modification on a browser and distribution to any device with a bandwidth of even 2Mbps at up to 60 frames per second. Additionally, the cloud enables ecosystem partners from all over the world to effortlessly collaborate on content production. It also offers a platform for aligning the needs of both business and creative teams.

The cloud offers a number of instants, on-demand analytic tools that enable extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of massive datasets to provide meaningful insights quickly. Also, in cases of cyber-attacks, power outages, or equipment failure, the cloud ensures faster recovery and continued access to information and vital big data insights.

Each organisation has its own migration journey, dictated by its business and customer needs. However, the cloud migration process has four requisites namely production, processing, management, and distribution. An effective relationship with a reputable cloud services provider, with the capacity to accelerate the digital transformation path for M&E enterprises on a worldwide scale, would be a crucial enabler in this transition. The only path forward, after all, is to be cloud native.