How Do We Make Media in the Cloud as Easy as on Prem?

The shift of virtually every aspect of media to the cloud is in progress. Many extoll the wide-ranging benefits of this move, from increased agility, efficiency, freeing up physical space, switching from CapEx to OpEx, de-focusing staff on data center management, and the list goes on. While there are certainly potential benefits of such a move, they often come at a cost. Remember the old term “plug and play”? In the good old days of connecting physical equipment, as long as you had the right boxes, cables and connectors, you often could just plug equipment together, and be up and running in no time. Unfortunately, it's not quite so simple when trying to connect media products in the cloud. — In general, the world of software is far more flexible than the world of hardware, and this is where the real “gotchas” are. The places where integration in the cloud can be tripped up are seemingly endless. But does it really need to be so complex? Why can't we just connect up products from multiple vendors, across platforms, and have them “just work”? Who's working on making this a reality? The good news is that there are standardized solutions to these issues emerging. We'll dive into what they are, and how they realize the promise of making connecting media products in the cloud as easy as doing it on prem.

Published

2022-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Cloud, standards, interoperability, plug and play, SMPTE, OSA, CGGC, on-prem

DOI

10.5594/M001985

ISBN

978-1-61482-963-8