This blog article by Blackbird's Product Manager, Huw Dymond, originally appeared on blackbird.video 17 August 2018. Reproduced here with permission.
Having just returned from ABE with a healthy dose of jet lag – I've taken some time to analyze all the conversations, demonstrations and meetings I had. Within a relatively short time in Sydney, it's fair to say that our time was really maximized with high-quality engagements thanks to Digistor as our local partner in the region.
Cloud adoption is a global trend with various regions ahead of the curve thanks to existing infrastructure and connectivity. Studies vary but generally agree that public cloud revenue is increasing 24% year on year – healthy by anyone's views. The fact that it covers over $178B of spend gives media and entertainment companies a strong reason to be looking to cloud services and hybrid solutions to begin leveraging the benefits of scalability, agility, and flexibility.
We met customers using Azure, AWS, Google, in region telecoms services and their own data centres – and in many cases a combination of all of these. This diversity provides an ideal forum for discussing a common way to access any mix of video content without having to centralize original media or begin complex solution design to even consider how to make use of it.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that commercial cloud computing adoption is increasing significantly from 19% to over 30% within a single year. This acceleration is an excellent basis for a fresh look at the true benefits of cloud and unique differentiators on offer from cloud technologies. The media and entertainment sector is worth in excess of $3B just within Australia and this doesn't even factor in areas like eSports, news, publishing, and others.
Australia itself is a vast country, highlighted by flying down from south east Asia where the first point of land is reached – then you've got another 6 hours before touchdown. Connectivity is improving rapidly with infrastructure investment and average speeds have increased from 7.8Mb/s to 14.1Mb/s in just 2 years. Regardless of this improvement – increases in workforce mobility presents a challenge to video content creators, producers and rights owners – essentially how to scale effectively and provide tools that are flexible, scalable and able to provide the same high-quality user experience from anywhere, on any device.
On the first day of the ABE show, I presented some of these technology, consumption and infrastructure dynamics to a room full of delegates. This included demonstrations of some of the core Blackbird technology with excellent questions from the audience to wrap up, including queries about collaboration, storage and the breadth of our input and input codecs. The fact that this was achieved seamlessly on a shared conference internet connection without the need for direct access to the original video content whilst still enabling the same high-quality user experience expected from a desktop application within no more than a web application, was very well received.
Blackbird as a technology is designed to enable a workstation like experience in the cloud, with fluid video navigation and without any visible latency. It is the perfect solution to challenges in an area of technology where file sizes outweigh much of the infrastructure able to effectively host them.
Once combined with the advanced web-based applications of Blackbird, Ascent and Forte, for advanced clipping, enriching and publishing workflows – the solution really becomes something that enables a new generation of end to end workflows for ingesting, managing and distributing video content from anywhere, to anywhere – and in more workflows than ever, without the need for complex finishing tools or integration with legacy platforms.
Our thanks go out to all the attendees of the show and to Andrew Mooney and rest of the Digistor team for their excellent support and also to the coffee shop next door for their excellent "jumbo" sized lattes.
References
https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/market-research-reports/information-media-telecommunications/motion-picture-sound-recording-activities/motion-picture-video-production.html
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/cloud-computing-adoption-in-australia-is-booming-468833
https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf
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