Short answer is, not very.
Getting up and running with Media Composer in the cloud couldn't be simpler. It is practically a one-click operation.
Apart from choosing a region for your deployment, the deployment process and underlying cloud infrastructure layer is abstracted from the user. This makes it incredibly simple as no knowledge or experience with cloud computing services is required, nor any account with a cloud computing service.
Avid | Edit on Demand uses the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. However, this is totally hidden from the user experience.
You simply log into your Avid Master Account and redeem your Edit on Demand code. Deployment will take a few hours, but it is fully automated. An email will notify you when it is ready to go. You will then have access to the Avid On Demand Portal where you can create users, get system information and monitor usage.
Once done, your cloud workstation(s) will be ready to connect to using the Teradici PCoIP client. This is installed on your local machine. The client software is available for MacOS, Windows, Linux and even iOS and Android mobile platforms.
The Avid | Edit On Demand cloud workstation is a high-spec'd Windows virtual machine running your chosen version of Media Composer. Everything is ready to go. The Avid NEXIS Workspace is mounted and a fully-licensed Media Composer | Ultimate launches automatically.
To copy files to and from the cloud NEXIS shared storage, simply open a link in a web browser on your local machine to the file transfer agent (FileCatalyst). From this web page, you can copy to and from a folder on the NEXIS. This requires zero user configuration. It was managed by the initial deployment process.
At the end of your editing session, you can shutdown your cloud Media Composer workstation, or just sign-out as it will automatically shutdown when idle for 15-20 mins.
When you need to connect again, you just launch the machine again. This process takes a couple of minutes.
Avid | Edit On Demand is still in early access, but as you can see, setup and deployment could not be easier.