NAB Roundup: Cloud Has Arrived for Broadcasters

by Seth Noble |  Blog |  May 05, 2017

Last week, we had the privilege of exhibiting at the National Association of Broadcasters annual trade show in Las Vegas. Thanks to Oracle, we were able to observe the state of the broadcasting industry from a prime vantage point on the main aisle of the South Lower hall. What I saw is that, for the Media & Entertainment industry, cloud adoption is no longer a question of "if" or even "when." Cloud workflows are here and the only question is "how."

Early resistance to cloud for M&E centered on questions of content security and the development of useful workflows. Those concerns have been largely overcome, with vendors now more focused on the advantages of their particular workflows rather than selling the basic idea of cloud computing itself. It is much easier now to visualize how content gets into, through, and out of the cloud than it was in years past.

With cloud adoption now seen as inevitable across all verticals, the next challenge is figuring out exactly what it means, and what it costs, to shift traditional workflows to the cloud. One factor I've seen in the cloud adoptions DEI has participated in: cloud migration is a lot more complex than most people realize. There are certainly benefits to be had, especially for the dynamic, project-based, workflows that characterize M&E. But it takes a lot of careful planning and testing to keep "dynamic" from degrading into "unpredictable" and from there to "expensive."

In my next post, I'll take a look at some of the cloud migration details that are commonly overlooked, and what you can do to keep them under control.