Cloud Computing in the Media Industry: The Possible Gains and Risks

The media industry has gone through some transformations in recent years, and one of these significant changes is the good news that some media companies have already begun to move their IT systems to the cloud for faster delivery and cost efficiency. Needless to say, the millennium had seen many media companies change their content format from analog to digital for easy storage, transmission and upgrade. The amount of digital archives in the media industry has increased lately, and this has brought immense pressure on media companies to devise appropriate mechanisms to protect, store, and update their digital archives. Similarly, the recent hike in the demand for media products and services has forced media companies to rethink the way they serve their insatiable customers: there is unprecedented volume of demands for online videos, news, reports, commentaries etc, and media companies are bothered with the huge responsibility of fulfilling their customers’ requests within the shortest time possible. Media cloud—a jargon used to describe the adoption of cloud computing in the media industry—has been quite instrumental in assisting media companies to respond to their customers’ demands in a faster and properly coordinated manner.  Traditionally, customers could not have access to media products until sometime after they had been produced. Today, with the adoption of cloud technology, media companies can deliver their digital products/content as soon as they are made. This gives the media companies a huge advantage of marketing their digital products/services faster than before. Media cloud offers bigger capacity for digital content as well as maintaining them in archives for a long time so that customers can easily access them anytime anywhere.  This practice of increased exposure of media content to customers for as long as possible has helped some media companies achieve more profitability through increase in sales and revenues. Not only that, customers can receive the latest flow of information in real-time owing to the fact that cloud computing, which is flexible and scalable, allows periodic updating of the media products without any delay. In other words, cloud computing guarantees the availability of media products/services globally, and this quality, no doubt, enhances business expansion and agility. Since media companies won’t be bogged down with huge cost of hiring IT personnel, maintaining the inventory and spending recurrent capital expenditure on acquiring IT software and hardware, many media companies find cloud computing expressly cheap and stable. Cost efficiency is one of the innovation-driving indices in the business world today as companies spend less on a section of their operations, say IT system and invest the saved money elsewhere to increase performance and profitability. Media cloud encourages optimal use of technologies and improves asset utilization for the purpose of reducing the time media products/services are made available to the market. However, the two main risks associated with the use of media cloud are: (i) security and (ii) worry about performance.  Some media companies that are reluctant about moving their in-house IT infrastructure to the cloud often cite security as the main cause of concern. They often argue that exposing their archives of content to subscribers whose activities they cannot control (once their content is in the cloud) may lead to loss of vital content. They strongly believe that some mischievous users or subscribers may steal some of their media products and violate their archives. Similarly, there is a grave concern about how media cloud shutdown may affect the performance of their operations. Not all media companies are sure that adopting media cloud can guarantee uninterrupted products-services delivery. But as the issues of security and performance are practically dealt with, there is every possibility that the number of media companies adopting cloud computing will increase in the years ahead. No success-oriented company wants to overlook the cost efficiency, fastness in product/service delivery and possibility of business innovation that media cloud promises.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.   About the Guest Author: Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/