The talk about cloud is everywhere. People swear by the cloud-based services, cloud platforms and cloud playouts due to their high levels of reliability and accessibility. The physical playout services are known to falter and blackout during important broadcasts including your favourite talk shows and reality shows. Today, we are here to discuss whether the cloud playout is finally ready to overthrow physical playout services.
Why are physical playout infrastructures expensive?
Have you ever stopped to wonder why traditional playout services cost a bomb to set up? Building the systems the old way involves identifying and eliminating every single point of potential failure. On-premise broadcast systems are susceptible to failure during various scenarios. Whether it is a power surge or the failure of the installed cooling system, a number of factors can put your daily broadcasting activities at a risk when you are reliant on physical playout services. Public broadcast networks go off air from time to time, albeit rarely, due to similar problems. Every minute of staying off-air can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size and reach of their network.
How much redundancy can on-site playout servers bring?
Market leaders, who have not migrated to the cloud completely, build individual local data centres each time they launch a regional network. They recreate the infrastructure of the broadcasting setup once again from scratch at each of these centres for redundancy. That is great for the production workflow, but it is definitely not a great way to spend the sponsor’s money! If you are thinking about working with a local data centre, you might just be looking at physically shifting your problems to somewhere else. Therefore, even with redundancy in the local servers, these broadcasting units are not completely immune. All it would take is one flood or a fire to wipe out the transmission for a long time.
How do broadcasters enjoy redundancy on the cloud?
Cloud systems are designed for redundancy. That means just in case there is a problem with one source of content or one channel, there are backup systems to fill in for them. A large public cloud provider can give you the infrastructure you need to complete your broadcasting workflow. When you utilize a public cloud playout service, you are outsourcing your datacentre design to the cloud service provider. This provider can be a large-scale organization that is handling broadcasting setups, datacentre infrastructure and workflow quality for your broadcasting company. In short, you are outsourcing your headache regarding the production workflow, content sourcing and management to these cloud service providers.
Is creation of redundancy always expensive?
The aim of cloud playout is to provide immunity to all these broadcasting companies in the true sense. While working with a large cloud service provider, you need to migrate the video content, the management software, the workflow manager and the other programmes necessary for the maintenance of the broadcasting signal to the cloud. It eliminates the requirement for the redundancy of the equipment or hardware. The moment you shift form a hardware-reliant system to a completely Software as a Service (SaaS) dependent one, you will be cutting the cost of operations tremendously.
Do you really need cloud playout all the way?
When you approach a cloud provider for the first time, you may be faced with the question of “how many 9s do you want”. That refers to the downtime in minutes you can expect in a year. However, a lot of broadcasters do not opt for cloud-based playout because they have already achieved more-or-less smooth operations that delivery quality content to the target audience. Therefore, while migrating to the cloud, you need to think if you need to transfer every little detail to the crowd. In reality, broadcasters often have the hardware in place and bits of necessary software running as well. The cloud gives you the freedom to choose the different levels of redundancy in the process. There is rarely any need of migrating every bit of content, information and infrastructure onto the cloud.
The cloud allows broadcasters to dynamically over-position during critical scenarios like an important cricket match finals. A blackout during the Super bowl commercial break of the World Cup Finals will hit you harder than a blackout during a late night reality show. Therefore, when you are ready to migrate to the cloud, you need to ask yourself and your team what you really need to replicate. Do you really need 100% redundancy or can you save more by selecting a few operations? If you are not yet ready to migrate to the cloud, but reside on the ground (on-site servers), we understand. There are a few aspects of on-site infrastructure that broadcasters can still preserve. At the same time, on-ground infrastructures of today can provide similar redundancy that cloud infrastructure does.
In short, cloud playout might be replacing physical playout firms at a rapid rate, but they still do not have everything necessary to put them out of commission completely.
