The cloud is hands down one of the leading causes for change. Undoubtedly due to its increasing list of advantages, such as making it easy to collaborate with colleagues in different locations across the globe. Using the cloud also means that you can share media files with customers or other partners external to your company in ways more accessible, and secure, than ever before. Cloud deployments also mean users can move much of the infrastructure complexity to the cloud, as well as allowing for extreme elasticity and scalability. Despite these advances, there is still certain hesitation from those who believe the cloud can’t provide the security that they and their data need.

Rather than moving everything into the cloud, some companies are instead adopting a hybrid cloud approach. Hybrid cloud gives providers the best of both worlds.

We are already seeing some deployments from major broadcasters and content providers and we have installed some hybrid cloud deployments of Cantemo Portal. This move to hybrid cloud means that media management systems need to be able to manage that flow of content even more precisely, ensuring only the right content is sent to the cloud at the right point in its lifecycle.

Media management platforms need to be as flexible as possible to deal with a range of different cloud and hybrid cloud scenarios. For some, it may be a question of deploying fully in the open or private cloud, for others it may be fully on premise and then we see every combination in-between.

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Flexibility. The one word that best encapsulates the current trend and, as an industry, we must embrace this to increasingly handle whatever challenges the content providers are facing and as those are changing at an astounding pace, so too must media management platforms that handle that.

The way in which software is being purchased has undergone a dramatic shift. Subscription software is now common place. Many consider the cloud to be an enabler for this push making the onsite hardware demands reduce meaning a substantial cost saving.

Companies can budget better, knowing that the software subscriptions come with an annual or monthly expense, rather than having to find up front budget for each new platform or upgrade this in turn allows companies more freedom of choice, knowing that they can change systems and software to whichever best suit its needs much easier. As subscription-based software is becoming the norm, the media management industry is increasingly having to adopt this same approach.

Casting off the Shackles

Video producers are as varied as snowflakes, each being unique in what they look for in their media management platform. It is not surprising therefore that there is a need for solutions to be as flexible and scalable as they possibly can. New technology is having a huge impact on MAM systems and desired functionality. For example, most MAM systems are not yet prepared for handling VR content as well as other new types of media assets.

No matter the setup of media there are integral needs which will always need addressing, such as, storing and moving assets, handling metadata. Therefore, it is increasingly important for customers to be able to extend that core platform. For some, integration with a specific storage infrastructure may be important, for others it may be less about integrated storage and, say, more about having integrated editing tools, or adjusting the supported workflows. Being able to offer this freedom and flexibility is integral and as the market continues to grow very well could be the deciding factor for a lot of services.

Let’s Go Outside

We no longer live in an age where only big multinational broadcasters produce huge amounts of video content. Not only do we have smaller broadcasters and content providers suddenly able to compete thanks to new technology making it easier and cheaper than ever to deliver OTT services, but we also have companies using video to achieve all manner of things never thought possible. It is very different from the era of big broadcasters with large volumes of content all being distributed to the same channel, in the same format, and in the same way.

This new status quo requires flexibility above all else. Enough to suit the big broadcaster delivering hundreds of pieces of content across the globe to the small company using video to reach its customers, and everything in-between, and with so many different formats and channels, the traditional MAM systems either need to adapt or face the same fate as the dinosaurs before them.