Unlocking the Power of AWS for Media and Entertainment Workloads

To say the entertainment and media landscape has transformed in the last decade is an understatement.

From increasing demand for content, to new methods of production, to the need for personalized media that can be accessed anywhere and anytime, everything has evolved. Media companies have had to reimagine their business models and operations to migrate their content delivery from traditional broadcasting to digital distribution.

To meet these challenges, many media giants have adopted new cloud technologies.

Among these, Amazon Web Services (AWS) stands out as an ideal cloud solution for the media and entertainment industry. AWS has pioneered cloud hosting services and offers high scalability, elasticity and security, bringing modern advantages to companies in media and entertainment and transforming the way they deliver content.

Why Media Enterprises Need to Adopt the Cloud

The constant pressure to produce high-quality, always-available content and safeguard against data loss makes the cloud an essential tool for media companies. There are four factors informing the state of the industry:

1. High Consumer Demand

Consumers expect a virtually endless supply of content alongside real-time suggestions that reflect their rapidly changing needs. Entertainment and media companies must efficiently adapt by automatically scaling servers up or down as required.

2. Continuous Content Storage and Distribution

To stay competitive, creators are under pressure to constantly produce and distribute original content.

The cloud simplifies the storage, management and delivery of vast amounts of digital content. Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments offer even greater flexibility, enabling seamless workload shifting across public and private infrastructures.

3. Shifting Economic Models

The emergence of countless over-the-top (OTT) content providers, commonly known as streaming services, has significantly altered the industry landscape. Traditional cable, broadcast TV and streamers themselves face intense competition from the growing number of content providers.

Add to this the rising costs of content licensing and shorter technology lifecycles, and media companies need ways to reduce expenses. The cloud’s operating expenses (OPEX) model can help reduce the technology and infrastructure costs required for storing and delivering content.

4. Need for High Performance with Minimal Delays

To ensure a consistently positive user experience, content should stream with minimal delays and downtime. Even a few-second delay in streaming can lead to significant losses, as viewers may click away or switch to another channel.

Cloud architecture supports high availability, so content providers can live up to the promises in their performance Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and maintain consumer loyalty.

Advantages of AWS for Media and Entertainment

AWS offers tools and services tailored specifically for media and entertainment companies that help them effectively monitor and manage storage, compute usage and optimize costs.  For major tasks around content production, storage, processing and distribution, AWS brings scalable, elastic and secure cloud services. It is also equipped with deep learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), providing digital media creators with a cutting-edge platform for their evolving needs. Here are five benefits of using AWS cloud services:

1. Security, Scalability and Cost-Effectiveness

 86% of high-maturity organizations report enhanced security in the cloud.

AWS prioritizes security, offering a robust cloud infrastructure with over 300 security services and features. This allows organizations to build, migrate and manage applications securely. In the face of growing ransomware threats, AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) provides a scalable, cost-effective solution for complete data recovery, eliminating the need for idle on-premises infrastructure. For media companies seeking to optimize spend, AWS offers a pay-per-use model for the services leveraged.

2. Simplified Content Creation and Production

With the cloud, media companies no longer need to worry about limits on where they can operate or how many resources they have. Instead, they can focus on making high-quality content to keep their audience engaged. AWS entertainment tools help by connecting companies to global talent, providing unlimited storage and offering top-notch security and the latest technology.

With AWS, creators can leverage ML and analytics to optimize production investments based on consumer needs. Features like ML production edits enable quick turnaround for dailies and editorial reviews, while automated flagging helps manage prohibited content.

3. Efficient Storage

Media enterprises now have a one-stop solution for their storage concerns with AWS’s multi-tiered storage solutions. This includes Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), S3 Infrequent access and Amazon Glacier. These solutions offer vast data storage and can handle large data volumes flexibly to meet evolving demands while managing costs.

4. Easy Digital Distribution and Postproduction Processes

AWS solves broadcast quality concerns and ensures seamless delivery to any device, anytime, anywhere.

Media enterprises can rely on AWS for live, linear and on-demand content delivery. AWS specializes in enabling high-quality experiences for viewers, with significantly less time, effort and expense when compared to traditional data centers.

Pay-as-you-go pricing and fully automated resource scaling lets you handle any size of audience without upfront capital investment. Instead of spending time managing complex infrastructure, AWS lets you focus on creating engaging content.

5. Live Streaming and Subtitling

Engaging with larger – even global – audiences is simple with AWS’s ability to generate multilingual subtitles for live over-the-top streaming content.

Unlock the Benefits of AWS with Material 

From Netflix to Discovery and more, global leaders in media and entertainment have begun to embrace cloud computing as their technology of choice for its numerous key benefits – including reduced IT and operational costs, as well as the ability to deliver high-quality content virtually anywhere, anytime.

Material is now an AWS Standard Consulting Partner, with a growing team of AWS-certified professionals. We offer tailored industry consultations and robust data solutions. Our experience with AI, custom ML models, data pipelines and integrations ensures we can deliver advanced AWS solutions to meet your dynamic business needs. Contact us today to learn more about our cloud services and how our team can help you migrate to AWS.