The popular medieval fantasy drama, Game of Thrones concluded its eight-season long run last Sunday. The season finale of the show smashed all-time viewership records for HBO. With an average of 44.2 million viewers per episode, the eighth and final season is definitely the most watched season of the show. And not to forget, online streaming and on-demand rewatches have made a significant contribution to that mind-boggling numbers.
Come to think of it, a significant number of TV shows, live broadcasts, music and sporting events are now experienced on the online streaming platforms. And that’s just a small segment of the technology we know as cloud computing. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Spotify – most of the popular media platforms you can think of run on cloud technology. Will it be too soon to say that cloud technology is revolutionizing the media industry? Let’s see what the facts suggest.
What does cloud computing mean for media?
Media is not limited to online TV shows, movies, and music. It is a collective term that encompasses texts, images, infographic, GIFs, audio clips, videos and a lot more. Over the years, the use and production of media have increased, and the advancement of technology has a huge role in it. With truly unlimited data storage capacity, cloud computing is opening new doors for media management on the digital space.
According to a report by Domo.com, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated in the digital space every day. The report further revealed that in every minute of 2017, YouTube users watched 4,146,600 videos, Netflix users streamed 69,444 hours of video, Instagram users posted 46,740 photos, students made 200,500 web searches for essay help, Wikipedia users published 600 new page edits and Spotify added 13 new songs. And all that was made possible by cloud technology.
Besides serving as digital media storage, cloud technology also helps to connect billions of users. It is because of the greater reach and better accessibility, most businesses in the media and entertaining sector have already shifted to the OTT, streaming and other direct-to-consumer services that are powered by cloud computing.
Obviously, the rise of smartphones has made a generous contribution to this major shift, and it is likely to stay like this for the foreseeable future.
What does the future of cloud computing hold for the media industry?
Gartner predicted that the cloud market is projected to go up to $206.2 billion in 2024. Also, half of the global enterprises currently operating in the cloud are likely to go all-in by 2024. Evidently, cloud technology is evolving.
The cloud service providers like Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Service (AWS) are working on reengineering the public cloud to utilize a serverless approach. Serverless technology is a relatively new concept. However, its adoption rate is quite high.
In fact, a report by Sumo Logic reveals that AWS Lambda, which is the first serverless platform, has seen the adoption rate rise to 29% last year. In the coming days, we will get to see more of this technology from the big names like Google, Microsoft and IBM.
What does cloud computing have to offer to media companies?
If you believe that it is too soon for media houses to give in to the cloud, think again. Given below is a list of the benefits cloud computing has to offer to media companies.
- Modern cloud systems have the potential to maintain almost infinitely scalable operations and infrastructure based on advanced technology. This allows the companies to adjust their resources on demand in real time.
- Furthermore, the media and entertainment industry depends on the creative work of highly distributed teams. The cloud technology can eliminate the need for moving assets between various locations and help organize a seamless internal and external workflow.
- Besides, the demand for high-quality video and audio formats and live data streams is increasing rapidly. If it was not for cloud technology, companies would have faced a massive crisis in fulfilling those requirements. Hosting zillion bytes of data on the servers with the conventional technology was not at all feasible.
- Cloud computing is helping companies reduce storage costs significantly. And with strong network security, data encryption, and access management, cloud computing has made data maintenance a lot more convenient for the companies.
- Additionally, the other segments of media operation including production, distribution, finance, and marketing can be taken to a whole new level with the use of integrated tools powered by cloud technology.
Parting thoughts,
It is no longer an option for leading media and entertainment companies to avoid cloud technology. And now that all the quintessential services are being powered by cloud technology, it will be a silly move to rely solely on the in-house servers for data hosting. As the market gets more competitive with the increasing adoption of cloud services, it is wiser to bend the knee to the one true king – the cloud technology.
