Dive Brief:
- Turner, a Time Warner company, became the latest big name to choose Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider, according to a company announcement on Tuesday. Turner, which includes brands like TBS, TNT, CNN and NBA, is looking to AWS to augment its needs in creating "cloud-native applications."
- Moving digital content to the AWS cloud is no small feat and includes storing a "15-petabyte-sized library of archived CNN videos." Turner wants to deploy AWS's ML capabilities to better understand the viewer experience, thus improving content, advertising and trend analysis.
- "We're seeing media and entertainment companies leverage the on-demand, pay-as-you-go benefits of AWS to scale and cost effectively stream videos across a variety of devices, broadcast programs, and publish content around the world," according to Mike Clayville, VP of worldwide commercial sales at AWS. AWS is already servicing AOL, BBC, C-SPAN, Netflix and other digital media companies.
Dive Insight:
As the dominate cloud provider, AWS is scooping up companies that need its storage, networking, analytics and ML tools.
The AWS re:Invent conference is taking place this week, and the company announced five AWS Elemental Media Services designed specifically for video providers. The services include enabling customers to "build end-to-end workflows for both live and on-demand video."
Video providers are drawn to AWS because it allows them to discard technologies and broadcasting equipment that are difficult to "adapt to new device platforms, hard to scale to meet times of peak demand" and don't have adequate support for modern video formats.
Within the AWS, video providers can create custom video apps while only being charged for the tech being used. There is no doubt a cost incentive to Elemental Media Services as companies do not need to "procure expensive equipment for video data centers." Instead, services are automated and eliminates unneeded, outdated infrastructure.
Cloud computing mitigates the risk of converting and distributing content. The burden of the troves of predominantly visual data is placed on the cloud provider, and because AWS is responsible for so many big names in video production, it is unsurprising more companies like Turner are trusting their archives with AWS.
