Feature
DEPLOYMENT . “ From a Cloud vendor perspective , the key is deployment , that is hybrid , private and public and being flexible ,” he continues . “ We ’ ve chosen to align with the vendor that has the best range of services and features whereby we can offload a lot of the heavy lifting to the Cloud which helps us reduce costs . What we are seeing , in certain geographical regions , is different people preferring different vendors because of proximity to data centres , connectivity and even geopolitical leanings . The key is having flexible , modular software that can be deployed in the hybrid private and public
14 ADVANCED TELEVISION environment , so you can use the Cloud services where you have them , but also be flexible and use your own tools depending on which Cloud topology or which public cloud vendor you are using .”
As to the remaining key challenges , Qvest Media ’ s Newton , using a Formula One analogy , notes that you have to be on the right tyres for the conditions . “ There isn ’ t a ‘ one size fits all solution ’, a lot of our customers have maintained quite a high threshold for quality that they are not willing to compromise . You ’ ve always been able to get a minimum viable product in a nice , easy package . Walking around IBC 20 years ago , you would have seen a lot of companies that were
“ We are a creative industry , we ’ re not machines .”
- Andy Newton , Qvest
Media
“ A hybrid solution is probably the best way forward .” - Elke Hungenaert , Synamedia
claiming to do everything , but actually the trick is getting the right tool for the right job on the right platform at the right time , and orchestrating that in a way that doesn ’ t cripple you .”
“ Yes , there are some key things that are accelerating the transition ; almost everything these days is softwarebased ; low-latency protocols are becoming ubiquitous ; network bandwidth is going up at the same time , but managing all those
applications , orchestrating that application layer in a hybrid world is the tricky bit . That ’ s where our customers look to us for help , to get that skillset , to supercharge it to achieve what they dream of ,” he concludes . MONITORING . As to challenges and what could go wrong , Encompass ’ s Rose suggests that quite often , organisations get into Cloud without quite realising what they are taking on . “ When you were building something in your facility , you could see it , touch it , understand what your risks were , who was responsible ; which engineering team were going to look after it ; which operations team were going to run it ? When you move it to Cloud , what you ’ ve got to understand is that if you selfprovision with one off the big three public Clouds , you are responsible for deployment , you are responsible for monitoring .”
Watch the whole roundtable on a-tv .
“ You need to design the SLA for your service . A lot of people at the start of Cloud were saying : ‘ We can ’ t make this reliable ’. Well , you can . You ’ ve just got to architect it correctly in Cloud , but if you don ’ t , you ’ re making yourself a real mess , and on top of that , it ’ s harder to see . You can ’ t just wander into the facility ; you are not going to visit a data
centre to sort out a problem any more . Understanding that you ’ ve got to take on that responsibility , and if you don ’ t want to take that responsibility on , you want to go to a systems integrator , or a service provider like Encompass , those are your choices , but then you need to make sure that those organisations understand how to design and deploy in Cloud . I think that possibly in the rush to Cloud , some of this has got a bit lost ,” he says .