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13/11/2015

Designing For The Cloud Future

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One of the key points about the transition to IP, virtualisation and the cloud is that it is forcing people to re-evaluate the way they regard open systems, writes James Gilbert, CEO, Pixel Power.

The demands of broadcasting mean that our technology will always depend upon products specially developed for our industry. Starting today, though, these products will largely be software running on standardised, open IT hardware.

Indeed, the move to system virtualisation and ultimately the cloud depends upon software running on absolutely standard CPUs and GPUs. Without that, the economics fail and we may as well stay with the old world of bespoke hardware.

We also need open standards so that the new breed of IT-centric broadcast equipment can talk to each other. Broadcast engineers have always preferred buying best of breed technology, to get precisely the functionality required and to avoid being locked in to one vendor's proprietary view of the world. The desire to choose the right products for the task is definitely not going to go away.

At present those interconnectivity standards in broadcast are not fully in place, and so a degree of hand-crafted systems integration is required. Standards are being developed, and we must all look forward to the day when software products in our industry are as plug-and-play as SDI-linked hardware was. With that in place, though, I believe we could be looking at a total transformation in systems design.

Good choices made now could give systems stability and flexibility, and provided the individual software elements are maintained, should provide a very long-term vision for the future. System enhancements and extensions should be accomplished through controls in the software-defined network, not through wholesale re-engineering.

For this to work, each product has to have a high degree of flexibility for future changes.

I see this coming in three different forms:

• scalability – the ability to do more of the same, like adding extra channels
• extensibility – the ability to add new functionality, to do new things we have not thought of yet
• sustainability – the ability to carry on doing things if outside pressures force change, like delivering Ultra HD to mobiles.

Most vendors will talk – sometimes vaguely – about their systems being "scalable". You need to dig deeper and find out what they mean by this. Without extensibility and sustainability, then a product or a system is not going to be future-proof by definition: we need to know that our technology base will be able to adapt to new challenges in the future. The issues of interworking will be resolved, and good vendors will develop software platforms which are scalable, extensible and sustainable.

With all that in place, the transition to IP, to virtualisation in the data centre and to the cloud can proceed at a pace which is comfortable for the individual user. If a broadcast enterprise is not comfortable with using the cloud – because of the practicalities of moving large files; because of concerns around security and access; or because the nature of the business is a steady demand for processing not the peaks and troughs for which the cloud is best suited – then it is not compulsory.

There may be a lot of talk from interested vendors and conference speakers, but the cloud should be seen as just another piece of supporting technology which you can choose to use if it works for you.

It is not an end in itself.
The goal is to make your broadcasting, content delivery or production company more creative, more responsive and more cost-effective. The move to IP-based solutions should be embraced if it supports that goal.

www.pixelpower.com

(JP/LM)
Solidmate Ltd Memory Card Hire London

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