By Gail Balfour, Unleashing IT
Increasing demand, growing complexity, numerous formats, multiple networks, and disparate devices: why moving your video delivery to the cloud just makes sense for service providers and the enterprise.
Do you have a Netflix subscription? Do you download movies to your tablet, or access YouTube clips on your smartphone? At first glance, these consumer video diversions may not seem very relevant to the world you work in. But the technology behind such innovations is being rapidly adopted by the enterprise, while becoming increasingly complex for service providers. As a result, it is causing disruption across the whole value chain—from media companies to advertisers—and is changing the global landscape for content distribution models, in living rooms, boardrooms, and enterprise IT shops.
The demand for streaming video in multiple formats has accelerated exponentially, thanks to the popularity of smartphones, tablets, and games consoles. In fact, the 2012 Olympics marked the first time online viewing surpassed traditional viewing—but it certainly won’t be the last, says David Parsons, a Vertical Manager in Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).
“This is one of those times where a technology that started in the consumer domain has worked its way into the enterprise,” Parsons says. “There is a whole proliferation of devices you can access video content on. And if you are an operator, this makes your life very complicated.”
The need to stream to different devices is only the tip of the iceberg, he says. “There are massive storage requirements for umpteen different copies of files. You have to store versions for different speeds—and broadband speeds can vary depending on the load on the network.”
Compounding the problem, says Bill Gerhardt, a Director with Cisco’s IBSG, are the many new ways that enterprises are using video. These include content delivery networks (CDNs) for distributing education and training modules, for setting up log libraries, and for delivering live content to customers. “Although still small compared to the broader entertainment distribution business models, there is growing interest and innovation in the enterprise,” he says.
This sudden increase in demand has left companies grappling with multiple assets, formats, and rights management issues, as they search for more efficient, cost-effective ways to centrally manage the added complexity. This is where cloud-based streaming solutions start to make sense.
Staying agile and innovative
“There is a growing need in the enterprise to deliver video in varying degrees of quality and in varying conditions of network availability,” Gerhardt says. “You need to give yourself as much agility as possible so that you can innovate as fast as possible and meet the needs that this emerging market is going to continue to demand.”
One way that video streaming in the cloud helps companies stay agile is by lessening their reliance on hardware investments, he says. Constantly trying to integrate around hardware in such a rapidly changing environment can be difficult, which is why many technology providers are so excited about software-enabled solutions (in fact, Cisco has made a number of software acquisitions in recent months, including BroadHop, Cariden and Intucell).
Speed up innovation by reusing common assets
By streaming video in the cloud, companies can combat scope creep, keep costs down, and offer packaged solutions to the enterprise in a timely way that is device, hardware, and network agnostic—all within a consistent, centrally managed environment, Gerhardt says. This is because the right cloud solution should eliminate the need to integrate multiple silos of similar content.
“This way, I can start to mix and match my assets and bring in different technologies where I need to. At the same time, I am lowering my costs because I am reusing the same assets over and over again. And hopefully, I am increasing my scale because I am reaching out to more and more individuals who can actually consume my content,” Gerhardt explains.
“And that, at the end of the day, is the goal of the game—to try to get as many eyeballs on my content as possible.”
So, are cloud-based video solutions right for you? Whether you are an enterprise user or a service provider, step one is simply to understand who your audience is, Gerhardt explains. “Next, you need to know what you are trying to deliver, what that media content looks like, and how many different renditions of that content will need to be provided—and under what circumstances,” he says.
“Clearly, there are a lot of media distribution options available in the market. Whether they are used for consumer entertainment or managing the enterprise, their requirements are rapidly changing. So decision makers need to look at the supply of alternatives, compare them, and understand what they do differently,” he continues.
“But then ask yourself if there is a better way, by migrating those common assets into a common environment known as the cloud, that starts to give you more flexibility, more opportunity for service creation, more innovation—and hopefully—at a lower cost.”
Copyright 2015, Unleashing IT
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