A Cloudspotter’s Guide To Migration

“This is big business, and if we think we are the tail wagging the dog. We are wrong,” Al Kovalick (Media Systems Consulting) said of the cloud.

He cited (IDC) research that projects that the web apps market will reach $40.5 billion by 2014. And in 2012, 80% of all new applications would be designed to run in the cloud.

Asserted Kovalick: “We need to leverage it; we need to migrate to the cloud.”

Production collaboration represents one opportunity, as the cloud could provide applications including ingest, download, MAM, review and approval, storage/archive, editing, transcoding and rendering.

What is still missing is real time control and capabilities to support live events “especially when it is 4K,” Kovalick said, adding that the low-hanging fruit includes HR services, billing, traffic/scheduling and MAM.

“Just about anybody who makes a product could put it in the cloud [now],” Kovalick believes, though he pointed out that current business models encourage ownership rather than a pay-as-you-go model. “That is why you haven’t been seeing it. It’s too cheap, it’s too affordable. The manufacturers can’t survive (with this model). I think this will change, somewhat slowly.”