We also see virtual deployments that run in the cloud, but they are not cloud-native SaaS. Our customers need to be met where they are on their journey to the cloud, and we have the breadth of products and services to be able to do that.  Because of that, Telestream is a popular choice regardless of infrastructure.

Centralized Workflows And Elastic Scale

A major advantage for moving media processing workflows to the cloud is the cost savings that results from being able to centralize them and scale horizontally and vertically as needed. The need to design media workflow architectures for peak demand is eliminated.

Shared storage is typically the first step in building out a communal media production workflow. Increased media access and collaborative possibilities positively impact creativity but also present new non-creative burdens as ingest and delivery processes become more critical. Ensuring that best practices are repeatedly followed is difficult as these non-creative processes are distributed across multiple systems and done by a variety of people. When creative people ingest and package/ deliver media or are impacted by ingest processes not properly followed, creativity and workflow efficiency is negatively impacted.

Many customers take advantage of shared storage in the cloud, but they haven’t been able to maximize the benefits because they haven’t realized their processes and workflows are not suited to a centralized model. Hence, we recommend to not only deploy shared storage but to also centralize workflows for cloud-based media. With remote workers and workgroups all using the exact same workflows, ingest and delivery, file naming, folder structure, workgroup rights and privileges, and other processes are normalized across the organization, and they can be scaled up and down as media processing demands fluctuate. When these cloud-native media workflows are normalized and automated, they become productive and efficient, and creative staff is freed up from mundane tasks and can create better stories.

In one example, a Telestream broadcast customer, has done exactly that. By centralizing the reception and processing of media across all their properties in the cloud, they have been able to eliminate duplication of not only workflows and media, but also much of the equipment that was needed to process this content at multiple locations across the country. As a result, they have achieved significant cost reductions, and they are able to share content within the organization more easily because it is all being processed in a central “location” in the cloud. From there, various workgroups access the content from centralized, cloud-based storage. By doing so, they have turned what used to be a laborious process of transferring files around into productive, efficient workflows. Plus, they’re able to leverage dynamic scaling afforded by the cloud, and they do not need to build out for peak demand.

Updated Mindset And Process Enables Cloud-based Media Workflows

Several factors are fueling the transition to cloud-based broadcast operations and make it highly relevant to today’s business landscape.

Cloud Infrastructure Adoption – Across the Media & Entertainment industry, there is a mindset change underway from owning and managing a private datacenter to adoption of cloud infrastructure for storage and management of media content.

SaaS Availability - As cloud adoption becomes more ubiquitous there is a need to have cloud native software services available to execute media workflows. Bringing the Telestream Media Framework to the cloud allows for continuity for our customers’ workflows by using an underlying technology they can trust.

Elastic and Scalable – Encoding.com powered by the Telestream Media Framework can meet the expectations of rapidly changing business requests by expanding and contracting based on need at the time of execution. There is no need to overbuild or put off workflows to a later date. We can provide the service now and scale it up or down on demand.

Remote Availability – As the decentralization of workers accelerates, cloud SaaS products allow remote workforces to more easily collaborate and not rely on hardware and locally installed software.

Media Company Personnel Skills –There has been a change in who manages the operations of the media companies. More and more, there is a core competency in software development, and the Encoding.com API, for example, is the industry’s most mature, well-documented, and feature-rich API for cloud encoding. Whether you’re a developer or a video engineer, our API makes it easy to migrate your VOD processing to the Cloud.

Data Gravity

There is a term we use at Telestream, “data gravity,” that describes how to consider where media is stored and how to work with it. Data gravity means the larger the media files the more they will attract the necessary processing to them – they will not be moved. Moving large media files around can be expensive and time-consuming. Hence, Encoding.com brings media processing to the media across almost any geography.

Hybrid Workflows

There is still a need for hybrid workflows as the transition to the cloud is realized. Even as distribution workflows are moving more and more to the cloud and the final mile of supply chains can take place entirely remotely and in an automated fashion, the origination of assets and the initial editing of raw content often takes place on the ground with some human interaction. Our software, such as the Vantage Media Processing Platform used for workflow automation and transcoding, is ideally suited to operate in a hybrid fashion where one part of the workflow or supply chain must act on content on-prem while the next steps occur fully in the cloud. The flexibility of Vantage combined with cloud allows data gravity to dictate where and how the content is processed, automating any non-creative processes both at the point of origination as well as every step along the way as the content moves to the cloud and on to its final destination.

API-First Approach

An API-First approach means that every feature is accessible through the REST API. All the functionality of Encoding.com can be programmatically controlled through a rich API from remote media workflows. Having such a complete REST API empowers broadcasters to automate, improve, and expand existing media processing workflows or test and implement new ones quickly and efficiently.

In Conclusion

A changing landscape has opened the door for many media companies to begin their journey to the cloud. While they may be at differing places on that journey, we offer a variety of deployment models that ease the transition. Whether on-premises, in virtual environments, as cloud-native services with Encoding.com, or in a hybrid combination, Telestream can meet customers where they are.