M+E Daily

Synamedia: How VN Cloud Helps M&E Companies Deliver Top-Quality Services

Synamedia’s Video Network Cloud empowers service providers, content owners and broadcasters to deliver top-quality services while controlling costs through the VN Cloud Workflow Portal, according to Bart Van Daele, product marketing manager, Video Network at Synamedia.

“What we’ve seen is that global growth” in Internet Protocol over Cable Data Network (IPCDN) and the cloud allows content owners and media companies to “capture new business models,” he said Oct. 20 during the online Media & Entertainment Day event.

“They can launch channels more quickly, react [faster], explore new markets and that’s simply by leveraging public cloud offerings like Google Cloud, Azure and AWS,” he pointed out during the Cloud & Virtualisation breakout sessionManaging your Video Network Anytime, Anywhere.”

“There’s a couple of considerations content owners and service providers need to take into account” when consider a move to the cloud, he said. “First of all, business agility: How fast do I need to react to changes” in the market?

The second key issue to consider is balancing cost: Capital expenditures (CapEx) vs. operating expenses (OpEx): “How do you balance those?” In other words, he said, do you make a large investment to distribute content on your own or do you “go for a more pay-as-you go model” by turning to the cloud?

And the third issue to consider is global reach, he noted: “Do I enter another five-year satellite transponder lease or do I leverage public cloud and the global reach that quite a few of these global cloud provider companies have nowadays?” The cloud provides an organisation with “instant global reach, which enables you to, among other things, “test a new market quite quickly,” he pointed out.

And there are “obviously quite a few benefits to [a] move to cloud,” he said, explaining: “First of all, time to market, meaning cloud implies software. Software implies agility. So launching new channels in a software environment is pretty much quickly done. [There is] no hassle with moving boxes back and forth if you simply leverage [a] public cloud offering. The infrastructure is essentially there.”

There are “a couple of use cases out there that are a no-brainer to move to cloud in my humble opinion,” he said, pointing to disaster recovery as one good example.

Cloud Benefits, according to Synamedia, include:

  1. Time to Market:

Launch new channels in minutes, not months.

Snap-of-a-finger workflow configuration and activation.

  1. Flexible Scaling:

No upfront capacity planning.

Flexible and elastic resource allocation

  1. Optimised Cost:

No upfront costs – pay for what you use. Reduce own infrastructure cost and optimised work force.

Eliminate the need for dedicated network links and satellite transponders.

  1. Instant Global Reach:

Instant availability, any size, any region in the world.

Any location with a good internet connection suffice to help you.

There are, however, “quite a few challenges as well” with moving to the cloud, Van Daele noted. For one thing, “you need to make sure your employees… [are] trained” thoroughly, and that “requires a completely new skill set” for those at your organisation, he said.

That is why Synamedia introduced VN Cloud, he said, noting the recently-launched managed service for end-to-end video network functionality on any public, private or hybrid cloud enables organisations to, among other things, “only pay for what you need,” making it “quite flexible.”

In addition to critical capabilities such as full disaster recovery on the public cloud and media processing on-prem, VN Cloud achieves “five nines” availability for optimised experiences on any device, anywhere, according to Synamedia. The service also provides unmatched flexibility for workflow management and transparency into cloud costs, the company says.

Van Daele went on to provide an extensive demonstration of VN Cloud to viewers.

Click here to access the full presentation.

M&E Day was sponsored by IBM Security, Microsoft Azure, SHIFT, Akamai, Cartesian, Chesapeake Systems, ContentArmor, Convergent Risks, Deluxe, Digital Nirvana, edgescan, EIDR, PK, Richey May Technology Solutions, STEGA, Synamedia and Signiant and was produced by MESA, in cooperation with NAB Show New York, and in association with the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA) and the Hollywood IT Society (HITS).