Trending: Hybrid Cloud Media Systems

The days are dwindling when a media production/broadcast company can ignore the public cloud for apps, processing and storage. The Cisco Global Cloud Index 2014-2019 predicts that 48 percent of all enterprise workloads will execute in the public cloud in 2019. How can system designers take advantage of this unstoppable trend? This article outlines the basics of the hybrid cloud media system.

First, what is a hybrid cloud? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the hybrid cloud as follows:

The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

Hybrid clouds permit, say, a local media enterprise to divide up workloads with a public cloud. This way, existing, private, sunk cost, infrastructures can interface with public cloud services as needed. An example is use of the public cloud to archive video files while other media workflow aspects are done privately. Over time, more and more workloads (e.g. apps, transcoding, MAM, ingest, QC) may be moved to the cloud as desired until, in some cases, the local system is minimized. This way a holistic media infrastructure can be built with workloads divvied up across the system in a seamless manner that meets security and performance needs.

LOCAL AND SECURE

This is the beauty of the hybrid approach. Don't want to store your crown jewels in the public cloud? No problem. Keep them safe and sound locally. Hybrid workflows can be designed to function with just about any local/cloud partitioning of media, processing, storage and control.

Here are some of the benefits of the hybrid cloud approach:

Start small, scale to cloud according to workflow needs;

Fewer desktop-installed apps; run Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps;

Faster time to market for new products (business agility);

Geo-diverse networked operations;

Support for legacy product integration;

Support for small, medium and large systems;

Leverage virtualized cloud services; storage, processing, security, reliability, pay-as-you-go accounting (OpEx not CapEx accounting), and

Rich APIs for customization as needed.

Even a few of these benefits can be sufficient reason to include the cloud in your workflow. However, for some, using any public cloud services is a no go because of security. Is this wise thinking?

There are many aspects to cloud security and multitenancy is near the top of the list. This is where a given user shares cloud resources (compute, storage, networking) with other mostly unknown users.

However, There's been no correlation between security failure and the degree of multitenancy, said Jay Heiser, vice president of research for Gartner, at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit in June 2016. Gartner predicts that by 2018, increased security will displace cost savings and agility as the primary driver to move to public cloud. In the near future trusted public clouds will become the most secure place to store valuable digital assets. The tide is turning.

EXAMPLE HYBRID CLOUD MEDIA SYSTEM

Fig. 1: The diagram shows a generic hybrid cloud media system. The upper portion illustrates the local/private media center (PMC). The cloud portion (PCMS) contains services for storage, processing and app execution. (Figure concept: Prime Focus Technologies, CLEAR Software Suite. Download the white paper at tinyurl.com/PFT-CLEAR.)

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