Understanding the present and future benefits for the media enterprise
How Media Enterprises can use the latest cloud technology to drive connected workflows,
gain operating efficiencies, collaborate in real-time for “as-the-news-happens” delivery, and
unlock new revenue streams
.Avid Viewpoint: The Media Cloud
9 September, 2011
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©2011 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, Interplay, ISIS, Media Composer, NewsCutter, and the Avid logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. The name Interplay is used with the permission of Interplay Entertainment Corp. which bears no responsibility for the product. All other trademarks contained herein are the property
Executive summary
The media industry is faced with unprecedented change. Audience behaviors are fragmenting, new technology models are evolving, and the value chain is becoming more complex. Viewers, customers, and online audiences are augmenting and often replacing traditional media consumption habits with personalized digital experiences: they’re watching whatever they want, whenever they want. Media enterprises need to create, collaborate, process, store, manage, and distribute increasingly larger and exponentially more complex assets such as HD and 3D files. They need to do so on-demand, in real-time, and at lower marginal cost. In this new landscape, Avid strongly believes that the successful media enterprise will focus on delivering new consumer
experiences via distribution platforms that create new revenue models. Forward-looking digital media strategies must include cloud-based services in addition to traditional intranet and internet-cloud-based solutions. Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise (IME) framework provides a blueprint for organizations to confidently embark on this journey and take full advantage of the opportunities presented by cloud computing—now. Here are some of the key benefits of this framework:
• Improved business agility through workflow optimization and automation • Greater operating efficiencies and lower total cost of operation • Enhanced creative processes through fluid, real-time collaboration • Building new revenue streams through innovation that increases access
and aggregates content, creating monetization opportunities
Content is king—but who owns the throne?
The tools and technology needed to create, share, and consume media are everywhere—and almost everyone is using them. In fact, it is estimated that there will be over 500 billion hours of online video content available in the next five years1. We’ve become
a planet of journalists, filmmakers, creators, and viewers—capturing the world around us with cameras, smart phones, and other portable devices. And we’re sharing everything we create over an ever-expanding network of social media platforms. The news is no longer exclusively reported at 6:00 PM from a TV studio—it’s gathered and delivered, as it is happens, from wherever it’s happening, and anyone can contribute.
In the midst of this content creation explosion, media enterprises are realizing that traditional models and workflows are not sustainable. Success hinges on the adoption of new business methods that allow mountains of media to be managed, distributed, and monetized—anywhere, on any screen, by an audience that demands highly relevant, interactive, personalized experiences.
Consumers Demanding More Media
By 2015:
43 million Internet-connected TVs in US households
3Over 15 billion IP enabled connected devices
4Over 1 billion mobile video customers
5Today, it may be easier to reach more people, but each and every media consumer now has the power to determine how, when, and where he or she will connect with content. Media organizations must engage, retain, and appeal to individuals in more meaningful ways, or risk losing audiences to fragmentation. These new realities have created immense pressures. Content repurposing, version control, and media relationship tracking have become core components of a profitable media enterprise business strategy. Content must be produced faster, and it must be highly relevant to each unique consumer. Everything must be repackaged and distributed to the right person, in the right format, for the right device, at the right time.
The Integrated Media Enterprise and the cloud
Avid has developed the Integrated Media Enterprise (IME) framework specifically to address the challenges and capture
opportunities for media organizations in today’s rapidly changing environment. IME is a technology and business framework, as well as a strategy that helps enterprises successfully navigate through increasingly complex and challenging requirements. More than ever, media enterprises must squeeze more productivity out of production processes, often with lower budgets and fewer people; manage multiplatform distribution; and find new ways to access and monetize existing assets. The IME framework, supported by distributed workflows and open web services, enhances business agility through a modular and open approach focused on new workflows and business models that can be quickly deployed and adapted at low risk.
Media Exchange
Workflow Manager
Figure 1: Integrated Media EnterpriseWeb-based Application
Tablet
Mobile Devices Interplay
Back End System ISIS 7000
Interplay Central Middleware Server
A cloud-enabled entry point for greater agility
Interplay Central delivers extraordinary flexibility by enabling users to access, create, and edit stories—incorporating text, graphics, video, and audio via a rich cloud-based application. This highly versatile application provides an agile, collaborative, and profitable means of creating content on the fly using only a browser and Internet connection. Interplay Central is also the entry point for a series of ‘Persona Packs’ that empower an increasingly broader range of approved users to tap into and manipulate enterprise assets with easy-to-use tools.
Real-time collaboration
The Interplay Central user interface is highly customizable, making it easy for every team member to contribute to the process, then either play finished pieces directly to air or the web, or share rough cuts with Craft Editors for finishing. Efficient story-centric and rundown-based workflows enable contributors to work together with unprecedented efficiency by providing access to, and control of, content rundowns and video assets from anywhere.
The Integrated Media Enterprise can deliver its services either through local network-connected clients, or via the cloud. With production and distribution becoming increasingly detached from a single physical location, both producers and consumers of content want to connect and engage from wherever they are, whether in the facility, in their home or on another continent. The future enterprise will deliver many of its services through the cloud, so anyone can participate from anywhere, at anytime. Avid has begun to prove the value of IME, and media on the cloud, with the successful introduction of Interplay Central.
Figure 2: Interplay Central
At the heart of IME is Interplay® Central, which
serves as an enterprise “on-ramp” to the cloud.
Interplay Central
Interplay Central delivers next-generation, cloud-enabled, workflow tools for on-the-go media professionals through both web and mobile-based applications. With an open user-interface, Interplay Central allows individuals in a variety of media production roles “anywhere access” to the easy-to-use tools they need to complete tasks with greater visibility to assets, team collaboration, and workflow agility. Interplay Central is a key solution that acts as an Enterprise “on-ramp” to the cloud.
The key functionalities of the Integrated Media Enterprise include:
• Integrated media operations from acquisition and post production to archive and distribution, enabling collaboration across the extended enterprise and driving operational efficiency and transparency
• Complete visibility into the organization’s media assets and the assigned value of that media through an open media catalog— monetizing assets becomes fast and consistent
• Modular, open architecture that allows the enterprise to respond quickly to new opportunities with a high level of business agility
A different kind of cloud for a different kind of industry
At its most basic level, cloud computing is simply about the delivery and consumption of technology capabilities and processes “as a service.” From raw computing infrastructure to complete workflows and business processes, cloud services can be purchased through web interfaces that allow functionality to be turned on or off whenever and wherever they are needed. The cloud enhances business agility because it is instantly available and elastic, expanding and contracting based on the immediate requirements of any given situation. Plus, capabilities can be acquired faster and less expensively than through traditional procurement cycles.
“The global cloud computing market is expected to reach $241 billion in 2020
compared to $40.7 in 2010.”
—Forrester Research
“Within two years 80% of Fortune 1000 enterprises will use the cloud.”
—Gartner
Cloud computing has begun to deliver tangible results in industries such as banking and retail, but there is great potential for the adoption of a platform tailored to meet both the unique needs of the media enterprise and the broader requirements of the media and entertainment business. The availability of nearly unlimited technological resources promises to create new digital value chains that will elastically adapt to the ebb and flow of business and audience needs—addressing many of the key issues facing the media industry now, including:
• Transition to HDTV operations • Adoption of file-based workflows • IP networking
• Multi-platform content delivery
Most businesses generate fairly low bandwidth types of files. Sharing, storing, and managing this kind of data can be done fairly easily. But media is different. The creation process tends to be highly collaborative, and the files themselves are massive and complex. Media files not only include the video or audio content we can all see and hear, but they can also include incredibly nuanced metadata, such as highly-descriptive information identifying a specific scene within a specific newscast. This “data behind the data” —metadata—is the linchpin that unlocks a tremendous amount of value for every asset that is created. As with everything else in the cloud, metadata can be more easily mined, analyzed, and put to work to generate new revenue opportunities.
Public or private?
Cloud-based solutions can be implemented on a public cloud, a private cloud or via a combination of both: a hybrid cloud. Like publicly available cloud solutions, private clouds harness the power of the Internet and fast wide-area connectivity. Private clouds can be constructed behind an enterprise firewall, ensuring maximum security. This approach is often the choice of media enterprises that choose to leverage the cloud’s many benefits. Over time, the workflows and best practices established in a private cloud environment may be selectively migrated to the public cloud to extend benefits while mitigating risks.
The flexibility and openness of Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise framework will allow media enterprises to adopt private, public, and hybrid solutions using a measured approach to ensure sustained success. Global broadcast leaders are already adopting Avid’s Interplay technology, deployed in cloud-like environments, to realize impressive workflow improvements and business efficiencies. Many of these solutions have been implemented in a private cloud environment. For example:
• Distributed multi-site newsgathering and deadline-driven content creation over WAN
A large US broadcast network implemented Avid’s Interplay asset management and ISIS® technology at eight of its news
bureaus around the country and in London. Now, every authorized journalist, within the bureau or remotely, can simultaneously find and specify the assets he or she needs across all eight bureaus—and, only the requested media is transferred in SD or HD resolution. The result? The network reports significantly quicker time-to-air, reduced network transfer costs (based on more selective use of bandwidth), and better quality shows that incorporate the best footage from all bureaus—every day.
• Distributed access to a large shared content archive from multiple remote sites:
A leading Canadian broadcaster adopted a hub and spoke model utilizing Interplay technology to allow remote sites to contribute content to, as well as search, their central production archive. The result? The enterprise has reduced labor costs associated with media retrieval and is now able to trigger selective media transfers to and from headquarters. These assets are accompanied by full metadata and compositional information—so a show’s elements can be archived, then restored/rebuilt, by “re-linking” media using NewsCutter® or Media Composer® editing applications.
• Multi-site enterprise media asset management and workflow automation
A Nordic broadcaster with over 400 clients in 12 regional broadcast locations removed silos and reinvented workflows using a high-level backbone built around Avid’s Interplay software. The transformed company is achieving new efficiencies across the enterprise. The result?
a. Instant dubbing of all the media assets in the system, with upload of audio tracks directly into Interplay for further processing
b. Fast review and approval of both video and audio assets
c. A journalist review portal that saves thousands annually on DVD distribution and shipping costs d. Interfacing and coordination of a wide range of 3rd party application and storage systems
These examples illustrate how the combination of an IME framework combined with private cloud technology is breaking downing barriers associated with locally-driven broadcast production models to facilitate a distributed, flexible future.
A cloud platform for broadcast workflow
From story development through distribution, the entire contemporary production process has become nonlinear. It has evolved from a series of specific handoffs, to an endless variety of continuous, collaborative workflows. While the benefits of working in fluid environments are countless, exponentially larger media formats such as HD and 3D, as well as multiple screen distribution requirements, present a new set of media management challenges.
Figure 3: Cloud Solutions Specifically for the Media Industry
An IME-based cloud solution will offer the unlimited scalability and flexibility needed to meet the creative, collaborative, processing, storage, and management challenges inherent in today’s increasingly intricate production processes. For example, cloud computing tuned for news production will introduce new ways of maximizing value at every touch point. The many benefits of this approach include:
• Facilitating secure access to every media asset within the enterprise, from anywhere—giving reporters and producers the footage, graphics, animations, and audio sources they need to create more and better stories that build audience loyalty • Enabling further adoption of digital media workflows over IP, providing more automation and increased efficiency
• Providing real-time and on-demand encoding, transcoding, and streaming of digital media—creating a perfect platform to meet evolving n-screen delivery models
• Enabling the availability of content anywhere at anytime, by providing a centralized repository of assets and their associated metadata, to create highly relevant and customizable viewer experiences
• Providing more intelligence about the media, its metadata, and its usage through analytics, to help target, repackage, and repurpose the right media—increasing opportunities for new revenue streams
• Empowering knowledge sharing, collaboration, community development, and talent sourcing
On the ground, the cloud promises to enable real-time editing, collaboration, and story approvals, as well as a host of versioning and distribution capabilities that will empower broadcasters to truly make the most of their media.
References: 1. Forrester Research
Conclusion
Audience viewing behaviors are changing, content creation is exploding, and new platforms are entering the market, causing upheaval across the media landscape. Progressive companies are moving quickly to capture new market opportunities while leveraging their existing assets. Cloud computing for the media enterprise offers numerous opportunities not only to cope with but also master the challenges ahead. Innovations such as Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise framework for end-to-end workflow, efficiency and growth enhancements, and Interplay Central, for light, anywhere access, along with other cloud-enabled services, are helping media enterprises succeed right now. Combined with the cloud for media, enterprises will be able to:
• Develop new ways to retain viewers through the distribution of highly relevant content • Increase productivity by streamlining the process of collaboration
• Unlock the value of existing assets to establish new revenue streams
Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise framework and Interplay Central present proven opportunities for today, as well as a bridge to the future—think of them as a way to strategically evaluate the benefits of the cloud without having to bet your entire business on it. Enterprises can take advantage of new, differentiating capabilities now that can increase media consumption and grow market share. With access to a cloud-based solution, enterprises will also be able to leverage the agility and flexibility needed to adapt and succeed no matter what inevitable advances and changes lay ahead.
