From the IBC Show Floor: No More Doubts, It’s Time for Media Workflows in the Cloud

IBC2022 marked the return of Europe’s iconic media technology confab which had been on hiatus due to the pandemic since 2019. Packed halls, standing room only theaters, bustling networking events and crammed meeting schedules underscored the triumphant return of the event to the RAI exhibition center in Amsterdam. At the show, Ateliere met with customers, partners, and industry peers at the booth and across the show floor. Many agree, a lot has changed since 2019 and the momentum to continue the industry’s evolution in the cloud is unstoppable.

In talking with customers there were two trends that were immediately clear to us:

Content is Spread Everywhere and Customers Need One Consolidated View… in the Cloud

Customers and users have a common media supply chain pain point. They have content stored in archives and with service providers all over the world. Getting an overall view of assets and operations takes too much time and effort. They want a consolidated view of their content so they can plan sales, licensing and revenue around their whole library or asset base.

And the biggest shift that has taken place is that it's not just possible to get such an overall view using cloud solutions, it is the only way. Three years ago it was challenging to get people to buy into the concept of moving away from on-premise storage. Now that pushback is gone and everyone accepts that the cloud is the natural home for media workflows.

This has led studios and broadcasters to come to us with very specific problems they've realized only cloud solutions like Ateliere Connect can address.

In Terms of Costs, the Numbers Haven’t Worked in the Past (But That Is Fixable)

While the cloud provides an answer to the many problems that arise from having content stored in on- premise systems, people crunch the numbers and find moving to the cloud is still cost-prohibitive. The answer lies in removing the duplicate media files and streamlining libraries so that you migrate only what you need, making the budget work.

Our Deep Analysis/FrameDNA technology, which was recognized with an IBC2022 Best of Show Award, can greatly reduce cloud data storage costs in video production or postproduction by 70% or more.

Our architecture is built around the Interoperable Master Format, and Deep Analysis/FrameDNA is applied to identify unique frames that are different between versions (for subtitles, for example), consolidating versions and storing only the isolated frames between versions that need to be kept.

The adoption of cloud services to address distinct user problems also happens to support our vision for the industry – that the future will see the entire supply chain deployed from multiple vendors and performed in the cloud. As a cloud-native solutions vendor, we're well-placed to shepherd that future into being.

But being cloud native has given us another advantage that keeps us one step ahead of the rest of the industry. As we've migrated more cloud-native platform tools to take advantage of cloud architectures, we’ve become enabled to offer services and software to modify and manage workflows that customers haven't even thought of yet.

Cloud Infrastructure Is Ready for You

The biggest change for folks building and deploying the technology has been the seismic shift in consumer consumption habits, one that's still on a steep uphill rise. The rise of the Netflix era came to a head during the long months when so many of us were locked inside. Tiger King, The Queen's Gambit and Squid Game were all we had to talk about, and streaming services had to work overtime to supply the demand – in delivery as well as just managing the sheer volume of content.

That means the industry was, while not quite forced into cloud distribution, certainly encouraged to see the sense in it. As Netflix has been getting serious competition from the likes of Prime Video, Disney+ and others, it's forced all the players to be even more innovative and efficient in getting content from producers to consumers.

Cloud infrastructure isn't new, but suddenly users realized that you used to have a data center geo-locked in Germany, Denver or Singapore, and that was it. Now you have an AWS provider just about everywhere.

Such reach gives you multiple availability zones that can manage transport, storage, versioning and more and make your media asset management much faster. We're finding customers are getting more comfortable moving to the cloud and cloud providers like AWS are ready for them.

Lift and Shift Is Not a Viable Option

At the moment we're in something of a wild west in terms of vendors and services. Customers are confused about where to turn, who can supply the right pieces of the puzzle and how they're all supposed to work together (and whose responsibility it is to make sure they do).

And the lift-and-shift model, where content managers expect their whole operation to be moved to the cloud in one step while they cross their fingers hard, is not an option for the future. It doesn’t technically scale or integrate well nor is a business enabler.

Customers are looking for (and need) a trusted partner to provide best practices for migrating to the cloud. They love Ateliere's technology and service for this reason: our cloud-native solutions are backed by media workflow experts. We connect the media supply chain end to end, ensuring purpose-built tools are at your disposal at every step of the content journey.

The Future, Now

At Ateliere, half our job is building great products for customers. The other half is knowing where the industry's going, because it allows us to use the advantages and opportunities of the technology stacks and best practices that are going to underpin the content industries in the future.

The first step in fortifying and future-proofing your content management workflows is to be as aware of that future as we are, so get in touch and we can help you build an up-to-the-minute media supply chain.