Exhibitions India Group and 28th Convergence India expo hosted a webinar with two leading industry experts on the contemporary pertinent topic of Migration to the Cloud, Enabling Flexibility & Savings. The live chat focussed on industry dynamics as it undergoes massive innovations and shifts in production of TV content, with its delivery moving from over-the-air, satellite, or cable to the internet.
Mr. Remi Beaudouin, Chief Strategy Officer, ATEME and Mr. Sudharshan Aravamudan, Market Development Leader, JAPAC, TM&E, Google Cloud delivered an enlightening dialogue, as over 280 delegates from various sector tuned in to the discussion.
The discourse started with Mr. Remi Beaudouin giving the lay of land. “We are all facing challenges during lockdowns. Before the pandemic, the industry was already witnessing more flexibility and cloud adaptation. During COVID-19, the trend has held, and we must innovate, invest in R&D and manpower to continue growing. In India and globally too, we are witnessing the drive from customers for more flexibility as we prepare for changes in the world during and after the pandemic.”
The need for transformation was emphasized by Mr. Sudharshan Aravamudan, as he noted how OTT is driving growth across markets, and is expected to stay the course till 2023-2024. “We divide media into 4 buckets-Entertainment Studios, Media Broadcasters, Sports Leagues & Primary MVPDs. Today, OTT is driving the C-suite, which will soon be looking to reduce overhead in order to shift packaging/channel resources to DTC SAC marketing efforts. The challenge here is that the industry needs to transform technology from a cost center to a profit partner, and this can be achieved by partnering with a public cloud.”
Some important takeaways from the webinar:
Mr. Remi Beaudouin: “You can leverage the cloud for your media supply chain. It is efficient to employ a part cloud and part on-premises system for an enterprise. The load balances processing tasks between multiple clusters; with on-premise clusters for daily operations & public cloud clusters used as Discovery Recovery site if the on-premises cluster fails.”
Mr. Sudharshan Aravamudan: “Hybrid & multi-cloud solutions can enable choices for customers. Users can extend on-premises with pre-emptive VMs, connect legacy applications across clouds and avoid lock-in with an open source. Google has, in fact been named a Leader in Gardner 2019 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a service worldwide. “
Mr. Remi Beaudouin: “A Multi-Datacentre approach adopted by enterprises can help enable high QoS and assist in controlling costs. By making use of the multi-cloud mechanism, companies can also protect themselves against disasters with the help of serverless functions to trigger disaster recovery. We clearly see a trend amongst consumers in moving towards the edge in terms of cloud M&E. The coming of 5G, in fact, will only accelerate this pace. Ateme is growing, and we have access to funds as we are gaining market share. We are expanding our market presence and are committed to investing in innovation and research, as we are here to stay.”
Mr. Sudharshan Aravamudan: “COVID-19 is impacting the industry and companies to work in innovative ways to make their content accessible. For instance, Disney + Hotstar had a muted launch of its services in India during lockdown, at lower price points by D2C. The key trends affecting migration and enabling during these pandemic times are customer behaviour (as time spent on mobile and video has surged), content evolution (with productions stalled, distribution disrupted and live sports cancelled) and business models (user time spent on linear TV has risen, but ad revenues have dropped with generally slashed ad budgets).”