Feature
Talking about the Cloud
Advanced Television convened a Roundtable of top practitioners to debate the development of Cloud production and playout , including the impact of the pandemic . While remote working has placed an obvious premium on Cloud operations , there have also been real challenges in client liaison , and staff recruitment and training .
Setting the scene , Advanced Television ’ s Nick Snow suggested that if the Cloud in digital media production wasn ’ t front and centre before Covid , it certainly is now , with working from home becoming the new normal , which includes for what , until now , have been in-house and capex-intensive links in the digital media delivery chain . So , Is remote working via the Cloud the new normal for TV post-production and play out ?
“ Having been stuck in Canada , it ’ s certainly the new normal for me ,” admits Gareth Wills , senior product manager , Imagine Communications .
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“ From a playout point of view , it has been an ambition for most broadcasters . Historically , most have had disaster recovery facilities , which have had always had some level of remote capability , but there ’ s always been the assumption that [ when problems occur ] operators can jump in a plane , or a car , but when you throw a pandemic in the mix , things aren ’ t so simple .”
“ At Imagine , we ’ ve always made tools to help our customers work remotely ,” he advises . “ When things got serious last March , it became apparent that remote desktop team viewers longer term weren ’ t going to cut it ,” revealing that the company ’ s corporate IT people ‘ cringed ’ at the prospect of remote device usage and network connectivity . TOOLS . “ From our side , we ’ ve noticed the increased importance of having these tools to work remotely and we ’ ve added investment around the ability to work remotely . When you combine Covid and Cloud , that ’ s really a match made in heaven in terms of accelerating our industry ’ s adoption of Cloud .”
“ We ’ ve seen remote coming for the past three years ,” adds Rick Clarkson , chief product officer , Signiant .
“ We ’ ve always made tools to help our customers work remotely .” - Gareth Wills , Imagine Communications
“ Because we have a SaaS Card , there is some instrumentation in our services that we offer , and we saw a massive increase in remote usage . We looked a four cities : London , New York , LA and Toronto and we saw major , major increase in remote work during those periods of time .” SPIKES . “ We think it ’ s going to continue , because it works . The other thing that ’ s happening is that the networks are better , but we ’ re also finding that - some of the things that people don ’ t realise - it has really expanded the workforce . When you ’ re in the office , you need to be within close proximity to that office , but once you go remote , the talent pool expands and goes global . We see that with our products . We definitely think it ’ s here to stay and there ’ s the technology and infrastructure to support it ,” he suggests .
“ It ’ s all about utilisation ,” asserts Jean- Louis Lods , origination and publishing evangelist at Ateme . “ How do you benefit from that remote and Cloud infrastructure ; when it comes to people , the actual infrastructure ; placement of equipment and so forth ?” he asks . “ If you ’ re specifically looking at people , you ’ re not looking to move these around , especially in production environments , because you can aggregate . You have only the people required for the specific event , doing productions or if it ’ s a 24 / 7 playout , you can still be benefitting from the distributed workforce in a different location because you can fully manage the operation in a remote sense . The infrastructure future requirements then lead to a lot more flexibility around it , so we really think it is the future of how