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18/11/2015

More Cloud, Less Fog

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By Richard Welsh, SMPTE Governor for EMEA and Central & South America Region and CEO at Sundog Media Toolkit.

To cloud or not to cloud?
The term "cloud" is somewhat maligned in the professional media environment; it has become a buzzword – maybe even a dirty word to some. Yet the technology itself is leading a revolution in broadcast, with the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Google (via YouTube) all engaged in original programming. Mainstream internet services are entirely underpinned by cloud, and a huge shift of corporate information technology (IT) toward cloud will represent, even by the most pessimistic forecasts, business totalling well over 100 billion dollars by 2020. With so many other business sectors making some sort of leap to "cloud", the question for the media technology segment is not if, but how can it sensibly use cloud.

Just a fad?
So many new technologies are the consequence of a solution looking for a problem, or a grand marketing push that isn't driven by genuine benefits. Cloud feels very much as if it has gone from nought to 60 in the blink of an eye, and one could be forgiven for thinking it's just another technology fad. The truth is that it's more comparable to an extremely slow technology burn, and one that has faced many stalls over the years.

It has been almost 50 years since the first computer with virtualisation capability was shipped by IBM. Although the mainframe it spawned was all but killed by the personal computing revolution of the '70s and '80s, the mainframe and thin client model managed to cling on. It has been more than 20 years now since Compaq introduced the term "cloud" to the computing space in an internal strategy document.

In the mid '90s, though, the internet was nascent and the idea of shared computing resource outside the four walls of a building remained restricted to governments and academia. It has been more than 10 years since Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure, and despite the company's vision, the world then was only just waking up to the idea. Needless to say, selfies were nowhere near popular enough to need to be stored and shared anywhere other than on one's phone.

The trinity
So, why the cloud now? The answer may be that the three elements needed to make use of the cloud in a professional media environment – compute, storage and network – have matured sufficiently to support virtualised infrastructure in a useful way.

Each of these elements has its own requirements with regard to the media environment. Storage, for instance, has become commoditised from a cost-per-gigabyte (GB) point of view, so there is a pitched battle between the traditional on-premises model and cloud. Yet cost is not the barrier for adoption of cloud; connectivity is the current issue. While a local storage area network (SAN) can serve up multiple 10GB streams to hard-core real-time equipment, cloud has a way to go to reach a similar performance level. Nevertheless, multi-gigabit connectivity to public cloud is a reality today, and telecom providers are moving from multi-year contracts to "on-demand" bandwidth-throttling models.

Once media or data is in the cloud, what can one do with it? Cloud compute needs to be more than just raw processing power; equally important are the applications and processes available and how their operations are orchestrated. The ability to interchange and manage assets is essential to bringing together these elements, and current SMPTE work on the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) is a key focus for the industry. With strong support from Hollywood studios, broadcasters and the top video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, IMF looks to be the next step in removing friction from a fully file-based and distributed production/post/mastering process going from lens to screen.

At the SMPTE 2015 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition (SMPTE 2015), the newly published Cinema Content Creation Cloud Identifier (C4ID) specification was presented to the audience by its inventor, Joshua Kolden, from the Entertainment Technology Centre at University of Southern California (ETC @USC) School of Cinematic Arts. C4ID is an important step in identifying media in a maelstrom of data exchange across facilities and globally distributed resources. Close collaboration between groups such as ETC and SMPTE keeps work on critical standards such as IMF current with the latest interchange and asset management developments, such as C4ID.

But it is safe?
The biggest question mark for most people looking at how and where they might adopt cloud is the safety of their content when they move files across the open internet or store and process content in public cloud. The bar is set very high for high-end movie and television production, with all types of content security, physical and electronic, being used. Web-based and public cloud applications, on the other hand, are the focus of a great deal of scrutiny due to their virtual nature, as well as their potential for exposure to the general risks of the internet wild.

Rightfully, there are considerable layers of additional security required of cloud applications as compared with equivalent processes run on local hardware, and this necessity does pose a performance challenge during complex scaling processes. Cloud services including infrastructure, platform and software control often utilise web applications as a front end to the service, or rely on secured API calls accepted over the open internet. In this type of environment, understanding exposure and protective measures is absolutely key.

SMPTE has produced webcasts dedicated to security in an IP world. They include "Tackling Cyber Resiliency – Common Sense Methods to Reduce Your Risk" and the three-part "Web Application Security: The Devil Is in the Details" from highly respected industry experts. These webcasts are a great example of how SMPTE is tackling cutting-edge issues by providing essential education opportunities for all members. These webcasts can still be accessed by members via the SMPTE website at http://www.smpte.org/VOD.

Moving forward smartly
Much of the media industry is already quite far down the line of adopting cloud. The challenge for companies starting out on that path is how to make the move for the right reasons. For the early adopters, the utilisation of cloud platforms was a necessity and it made complete technological sense. With the potential financial benefits of cloud being touted in the wider IT industry, it's easy to get swept up with the hype and feel pressured into making a move. Cutting through those things and making informed decisions needn't be a lonely path.

SMPTE is a century old next year, with deep roots in motion picture film standardisation. Yet 100 years on, the Society finds itself still at the vanguard of standards development and attracting deep participation from industry leaders such as Netflix, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and many others. SMPTE offers professionals within the media technology industry a valuable opportunity to learn from leading experts in the field.

www.smpte.org

This article is also available to read at BFV online.

(JP)
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