Colocation Can Play a Starring Role in Maximizing Content Monetization

In the media and entertainment (M&E) industry today, “that’s a wrap” signals the start of a production race calling for real-time and near-time collaboration among multiple stakeholders. While each has a specific role in the process, they share a common goal: maximizing monetization. 

For some M&E enterprises, that means transforming “linear” television shows into on-demand content in less than 24 hours. “Next day air” video services enable satisfying over-the-top (OTT) consumer preferences and meeting C3/C7 industry standards (C3/C7 is jargon for three-to-seven days, the amount of time ads shown during the live broadcast are counted by Nielsen ratings). 

For studios, production houses and individual post-production services providers, monetization depends on rapidly and securely transferring extremely heavy files to one another and into the cloud. Creative teams, producers and video pipeline managers need to quickly access and pivot between services in the workflow, including everything from asset storage to transcoding and audio editing to rendering.

Services Providers: The Supporting Players

Multi-stakeholder collaboration isn’t new for the M&E industry. What is new is the degree of remote collaboration with partners in the process who may be located on-site, across town and across the country. That raises new challenges:

• Cloud data costs – Storing and moving data into and from public clouds is a key element in the workflow; the problem is, it’s expensive to move terabytes of data around.
• Network Costs – The internet is the current default pipeline, creating security risks and potential for slower-than-desired performance. And as the volume of video increases, so do costs.
• Security vulnerabilities – Multiple stakeholders inherently create multiple attack vectors. M&E companies are prime targets. According to a whitepaper by Sophos, media, leisure, and entertainment industries accounted for 32% of ransomware attacks.
• Scalability – On-demand increase of bandwidth, storage and compute capacity is critical to solving “good problems,” like an influx of work.
• Reliability – 100% uptime of services and networks is essential to meeting the demand for faster and faster turn-around at each stage of the process.
• Intellectual property protection – While everyone is collaborating on a project, there are confidentiality concerns on who owns the content and how to access it. 

The media services market encompasses storage vendors, asset managers, media processors, software for online collaboration and creative services and distributors. It’s a big cast of players. Making it easy for each one to perform at their peak is how award-winning monetization happens.

There’s a Rising Star: Colocation 

Some major content production and distribution enterprises have recognized that colocation, as part of their cloud mix, can reduce the total cost of operation inflated by network and public cloud data transfer fees. However, the colocation services provider needs to have two key capabilities to create significant savings: data centers with native onramps to public clouds and a dense ecosystem of domestic and international carriers. 

CoreSite provides those capabilities across its eight data center campuses, located in regions with high populations. Thanks to a provider ecosystem built over 20 years, we are able to directly connect with all the major cloud providers and offer access to more than 450 networks. The result is 60% less expensive cloud connectivity than traditional telco and SDN (software defined networking), 50% savings on network services and as much as 70% lower fees for data egress.*

Colocation can also reduce risk in four ways:

1. Cybersecurity is arguably the most important risk mitigation benefit. First, there’s the fact that data centers can better protect data at rest with parallel processing and storage. Plus, you can integrate services offered by cybersecurity experts, including multi-vector, extended detection and response (XDR) protection.
2. Data centers are built for the highest uptime technically possible, minimizing business continuity risk. 
3. Remote hands support is available 24x7x365, with highly trained technicians ready to resolve problems rapidly leveraging defined and practiced operations processes.
4. Physical security is paramount. With trained security personnel, several layers of access protection such as man-traps, perimeter fencing and biometric screening, data centers offer physical security most M&E enterprises can’t match.
   
   

Directing the Workflow with the Open Cloud Exchange^®

Data centers offer an ideal location to store production assets that studios, post houses, editors, sound engineers, producers, animators, storage vendors and many others need to easily access to work effectively. Colocation can accelerate and simplify orchestrating the complex M&E “supply chain” logistics in several ways. 

By colocating in a CoreSite data center, all those post-production actors can leverage cross connects for lowest possible latency and optimal reliability. They also could use the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange (OCX) to simplify and accelerate sharing assets among teams. With the OCX, you can run multiple connections over a single port and turn up and down Ethernet virtual connections as needed to any other partner in the OCX ecosystem. 

The OCX also simplifies interconnection with solution partners that enable spinning up virtual servers in a matter of minutes, meeting the need for rapid scalability and bursting. Through a single pane of glass, IT teams can interconnect to an ecosystem of industry partners and engage network carrier services as needed.

Roll the Closing Credits

Are you someone who watches the closing credits? Notice how extensive they have become? Digitization has made it easier to list all (or almost all) of the people and providers; the credits for Iron Man 3 include more than 3,700 names (along with 24 special-effects companies) **. 

Like most industries, digital transformation is pointing cloud strategy reevaluation toward a multi-cloud, hybrid IT deployment. CoreSite data centers, solutions and colocation services offer an ideal environment for media and content providers looking to streamline production, safeguard intellectual property and improve monetization.

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*Costs savings are based on CoreSite cost comparisons using publicly available and private information and/or CoreSite customer reported costs savings and may not be indicative of the costs savings that may be experienced by every customer that switches to the applicable CoreSite service.

** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/movies/why-end-credits-in-movies-are-so-long.html