Industry Insights: Reshaping broadcast workflows through the cloud

As broadcast production workflows shift towards cloud technologies, industry leaders are exploring the benefits and complexities of remote and cloud-based operations.

This final installment of the Industry Insights series on workflows dives into the cloud trends shaping production, from real-time collaboration to the scalability these solutions offer.

Our roundtable participants share their insights on how cloud technologies enable broadcasters to expand their reach, simplify operations, and reduce costs—while highlighting the challenges of data security, training, and legacy integration. In this discussion, experts discuss the cloud’s role in transforming content creation, distribution, and monetization, offering a comprehensive look at the future of broadcast production workflows.

Industry Insights: Navigating the future of broadcast workflows

Industry Insights: Remote production, automation and efficiency in broadcast workflows

Key takeaways from the Industry Insights roundtable

• By adopting cloud-based solutions, broadcasters can scale resources up or down, creating cost savings and adapting more easily to changes in demand.
• Moving workflows to the cloud reduces the need for physical infrastructure, minimizing idle resources and lowering operational costs.
• Transitioning to cloud-based workflows presents challenges, such as data security concerns and the need for extensive training.
• The flexibility of cloud environments enables broadcasters to experiment with new content types and optimize distribution, broadening monetization opportunities.

How are cloud technologies changing workflows in broadcast production?

Sam Peterson, COO, Bitcentral: Cloud technologies offer broadcasters real-time collaboration, greater scalability, and a more agile approach to content creation and distribution. This flexibility supports dynamic workflows where content can be accessed and edited from anywhere, giving production teams the adaptability they need in a fast-paced industry.

Will Waters, principal product manager, Audinate: Cloud technologies allow broadcasters to have an almost infinite source of production power at the drop of a hat. By leveraging the cloud, broadcasters gain flexibility, and production teams can scale operations seamlessly, from adding more content creation channels and mixers to integrating advanced orchestration engines. As a result, teams can adapt quickly to changing production needs without the constraints of physical infrastructure, significantly boosting overall workflow efficiency and responsiveness.

James Fraser, VP of U.S. sales, Moments Lab: Cloud technologies have been revolutionary and completely transformed broadcast workflows –and continue to do so. One of the most compelling use cases we have observed is in live production environments, for example, when covering the Olympics or U.S. elections. Footage captured on-site can be instantly uploaded to the cloud, enabling multiple remote teams to collaborate simultaneously for fast turnaround of story packages.

Rick Young, SVP and head of global products, LTN: Cloud playout technologies enable teams to collaborate from anywhere. But creating mission-critical, live content rich programming requires more than just throwing software in public clouds. In order to really create reliable, unique, revenue-driving content experiences, an infrastructure with an IP-first backbone built for live video first (vs. file-based workflows) is fundamental.

Tony Jones, principal technologist, MediaKind: Cloud technology brings on-demand flexibility, for example by instantiating functionality when needed, meaning better utilization of resources as well as the ability to scale up as needed. This avoids the high costs and inefficiencies of maintaining idle resources when they are not being used. It also facilitates rapid responses to production demands, such as simply higher-than-expected viewership, or short-term increases in viewership in peak periods such as the holidays.

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Jay Ganesan, SVP, APAC, Amagi: Primarily, cloud-native platforms allow for flexible scaling, automation of workflows, and reduced infrastructure costs, while also simplifying processes like content scheduling and asset management. These capabilities enable broadcasters to spin up channels quickly, manage operations remotely, and seamlessly integrate cloud-based master control with on-premise production.

Chris Scheck, head of marketing content, Lawo: Ideally, technologies for on-prem datacenter, private-cloud and public-cloud scenarios have no drastic effect on workflows, because familiar, or at least relatable, routines are important to operators. Examples of IP infrastructures abound where a sophisticated resource sharing strategy underpinned by a comprehensive control system creates a streamlined user experience that empowers operators. In this way, workflow changes are often the result of a team’s determination to achieve a given goal in a different way, and new technologies need to encourage such a decision. 

Aaron Kroger, product marketing lead, Dalet: Cloud technology is bringing new connectivity and collaboration to broadcast workflows. Teams can now work together regardless of their location and they are able to utilize the same mutualized resources. One example is centralized ingest, instead of having every individual station ingest the same press conference, new cloud based workflows enable that conference to be scheduled and recorded just once, avoiding a lot of duplicate work and resources.

What benefits do broadcasters gain by moving workflows to the cloud?

Will Waters, principal product manager, Audinate: By leveraging cloud technologies, broadcasters can significantly expand their content creation and distribution capabilities, reaching both wider audiences who require customized content and accessing markets that are unattainable with traditional workflows. This scalability not only broadens the potential viewer base but also opens numerous avenues for monetization through expanded distribution channels. Consequently, broadcasters can enhance their top-line growth by maximizing the availability and reach of their content across diverse platforms.

Rick Young: Beyond collaboration from anywhere and fewer servers to manage on premise, there are a number of key benefits to moving workflows to hosted, cloud, environments. This approach helps media companies experiment with new content types and programming — while giving content creators focused on news and sports the ability to spin up and spin down channels and experiences of all types around high value, and at times niche, live events.

Tony Jones: Moving to the cloud is often a trigger to simplify workflows more generally, reducing unnecessary complexity built up over time. However, a move to cloud is disruptive and requires those workflows to be reconsidered, meaning it can often spur an efficiency-focused reset. It is very often the case that taking advantage of newer approaches and technology leads to simplified workflows and reduced operational costs.

Chris Clarke, chief revenue officer and co-founder, Cerberus: The cloud yields very few benefits if it’s not deployed correctly. Whether broadcasters build their own workflows or use a competent service provider, it pays for them to understand the value of dev ops. Without clever provisioning, orchestration, and automation tools, broadcasters risk losing the main benefits of speed, scale, and efficiency as they move to the cloud.

Jay Ganesan: By moving workflows to the cloud, broadcasters gain increased scalability and enhanced visibility over their operations, which offers greater efficiency and flexibility. Cloud-based workflows also enable seamless remote collaboration across geographically distributed teams, ensuring uninterrupted operations and improved resource management. Overall, these workflows provide the ability to quickly adapt to changing demands and integrate new technologies, enhancing overall broadcast quality and viewer experience.

Chris Scheck: The most palpable benefit of moving workflows to a cloud, whether private and controlled, or public, is that investing in hardware that sits idle most of the time is no longer required. This will be a relief to the broadcaster’s management team. Also, less gear needs to be transported to venues and arenas for live coverage, while collaboration and distributed production scenarios may be faster to implement.

Costa Nikols, strategy advisor for M&E, Telos Alliance: Today, cloud-based solutions can give broadcasters the same features, functionality, and performance as on-prem systems — while helping drive cost-efficiencies and flexibility for remote teams. Virtual intercom solutions are a great example of low-latency, reliable cloud-based workflows trusted across dynamic live production environments. Beyond the cloud, many broadcasters are also exploring decentralized and hybrid models that bring real-time audio processing closer to the user — minimizing latency and enhancing responsiveness, which is crucial for live broadcasts and interactive media.

Aaron Kroger: The cloud brings so many benefits to broadcasters, two key benefits being scalability and sustainability. With the unpredictable nature of breaking news, sporting events and elections, the cloud allows for resources such as storage and media processing to instantly scale up and down to meet these demands all while doing it sustainably. No longer do you need large systems sitting mostly idle to manage those peaks, instead the cloud scales up just for those moments which can greatly reduce your carbon footprint.

What challenges do broadcasters face when shifting workflows to the cloud?

Sergio Ammirata, founder and chief scientist at SipRadius: Remote production and processing is entirely dependent upon completely reliable connectivity, ensuring audio, video and metadata are encoded to the required quality, and encapsulated in a format which can be readily transferred with time synchronization guaranteed. SipRadius is leading the industry, for example, by providing realtime AV1 encoding in GPU, and delivery of AV1, and JPEG-XS, in an MPEG-TS transport stream. 

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Sam Peterson: Challenges include managing data security, adapting existing workflows, and training staff to work effectively with cloud-based tools. A technology partner familiar with media workflows can help mitigate these challenges, offering tailored solutions that ensure a smooth transition without compromising security or productivity.

Sergio Brighel, EVP of robotics and prompting technology, Videndum Production Solutions: Bandwidth and connectivity in first place. This in turn affects the warranty of real-time processing and streaming. Then long-term cost of transition (training and integration with legacy systems), data security and privacy. Additionally, providers could progressively pose conditions or constraints which could avoid parallel deployment of alternate solutions.

What are the cost implications of moving broadcast workflows to the cloud?

Rick Young: By transitioning to the cloud, media companies replace large CapEx investments with flexible, on-demand services that can easily provision more resources at a moment’s notice. This is a major advantage for sports production companies especially as cloud playout solutions have intuitive user interfaces that make them easier to manage from anywhere, allowing companies to adopt remote production workflows, removing the need to bring vast numbers of staff and equipment to events. Moving to an OpEx model enables them to adjust spending in real time, aligning with shifting market trends and audience needs, without the burden of large upfront investments.

Robert Szabo-Rowe, head of engineering and product management, Tata Comms Media: Cloud and remote productions enable broadcasters to produce most live content at a lower cost. By utilizing centralized remote production, organizations can operate with smaller teams and transport less equipment, which minimizes travel, transport, and accommodation costs. This approach is making live event coverage more economical and accessible for a broader range of media organizations.

Sergio Brighel: Long term cost of transition: integration with the legacy equipment still needed on-site, training, cost of ownership for licenses, connectivity, and storage space.

How does cloud-based collaboration affect production teams?

Sergio Ammirata: Live production depends upon seamless, instant communication, like they get with intercoms on single-site productions. We have developed a complete chat environment, like Telegram, for documents as well as voice, which piggy-backs onto the interconnectivity between remote sites and the cloud, eliminating communications challenges. 

Robert Szabo-Rowe: Cloud-based workflows have proven their worth in producing live sports and entertainment events over the last few years. What’s more, distributed production set-ups allow live content producers to tap the very best talent and crew regardless of where they’re located. With strong interconnectivity, production teams can collaborate as one unit despite being potentially thousands of miles apart.

Sergio Brighel: It does leverage on collaboration across different geographical areas. It allows a centralized control of the cloud based assets, it harmonizes the working environment for the production crews.

Aaron Kroger: Enabling cloud based collaboration brings much greater visibility across an organization which leads to a reduction of duplicate efforts. It also drives better content by allowing teams to easily create tailored versions of work that has already been done while maintaining consistent messaging and facts across multiple distribution channels.

What strategies help broadcasters manage the transition to cloud-based workflows?

Jay Ganesan: To manage this transition successfully, broadcasters should partner with trusted cloud service providers, implement strong security measures, and focus on gradual migration of operations. We recommend starting with specific functions like playout or disaster recovery, then expanding to full cloud-based operations as teams become more comfortable with the new technologies.

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Sergio Brighel: My approach would be by islands. That would offer the broadcaster to climb on the learning curve distributing the risks and costs over a longer time span. Hard transitions like ST2110, remote production and cloud based assets cannot be executed without a phased approach.

Aaron Kroger: Transitioning to the cloud is no small task, that is why a hybrid approach is one of the best strategies to utilize. By going hybrid you begin gaining the benefits of the cloud while still maintaining your existing resources and workflows. Over time, you can move more data and processes to the cloud at your own pace.

How does the use of cloud services affect the scalability of broadcast production?

Will Waters: Cloud services give broadcasters dynamic scalability and the capability to deploy innovative production formats that capture new audience segments. This flexibility not only facilitates rapid expansion and customization of production but also unlocks unique revenue opportunities through tailored content experiences. With the ability to swiftly incorporate additional processing power and advanced production tools, broadcasters can efficiently meet diverse market demands and capitalize on emerging trends in content consumption.

Jay Ganesan: Cloud services significantly enhance the scalability of broadcast production by allowing broadcasters to rapidly adjust their operations in response to demand. This flexibility enables quick launch of new channels, seamless adaptation to market conditions, and the ability to scale resources up or down as needed, all without the limitations of physical infrastructure.

How does the shift to cloud and automation impact the quality of broadcast content?

Andy Hooper, SVP of live products, Ateliere Creative Technologies: This question is interesting because it seems to hold an underlying implication that can often be felt across the industry — that traditional platforms and workflows are being compromised by the move to cloud, automation and software — that such approaches can only be lower quality. I prefer to frame it differently — new technology and workflows allow flexibility of approach per production. For the first time, video quality, production and control latency, and the cost of production are becoming decidable objectives rather than fundamental constraints.

Sergio Brighel: It depends on the adopted strategy. An all-in approach could be quicker to implement and apparently more cost-efficient. However the risk for quality, downtime and incidents is higher. A phased approach is slower, yet more secure. Automation requires particular attention as AI is still incapable of reacting to the context as a human director/operator would. 

What are the key considerations when choosing cloud services for broadcast workflows?

Will Waters: It’s always best to check with the critical software providers to select a cloud hosting service that is supported by the provider. By doing so, you will gain the trust that the solution has been deployed and thoroughly tested in the cloud environment, as well as frequently gain additional tools, scripts and software to ensure optimal performance.

James Fraser: A clear, long-term strategy is crucial for successful cloud technology integrations. At Moments Lab we advise our clients to begin by choosing a specific use-case that not only demonstrates value for their organization but also offers scalability for growth. This approach helps to secure buy-in from stakeholders and builds confidence in implementing technologies in a way that supports both current and future needs, making any transition smoother and more sustainable.

Tony Jones: The first consideration will always be about robustness — both in terms of availability and content protection. These two aspects are key to high-value broadcast systems, and both cloud vendors and technology suppliers need to clearly meet these objectives. When considering costs, a holistic view is merited, considering all the costs involved for both the on-premises and cloud options (such as maintenance, server upgrades, cooling, building rent, IT staff).

Jay Ganesan: Broadcasters should look for end-to-end solutions that cover the entire broadcast chain, from content ingest to playout and delivery across multiple platforms. These services should support both traditional linear TV and OTT/FAST channels, enabling unified workflows that reduce operational complexity and costs. It’s also crucial to select a provider that offers features like cloud playout, channel origination, content management, and advanced analytics to support diverse broadcast needs.

How is data management handled in cloud-based broadcast workflows?

Paul Turner: The first step is to manage data across all storage, including on-premises and cloud-based, and know where media lives, how often your team uses it, and how quickly you can get it. It’s a dilemma that AJA is working to help solve with our Diskover Media Edition data management software. Once you’re able to get a holistic view of your data with a platform like Diskover, it’s then easier to make more informed decisions about your media and monetize it by pushing that media out to the delivery mechanisms that make the most sense, i.e., set-top boxes, tablets, cell phones, etc.

Sergio Brighel: By robust connectivity scaled for the worst-case events, by centralized storage and access, by a proper management of metadata, by a rigid control on harmonization of file versions, by ensuring data security and encryption, by a proper sizing of Storage and back-up archives, by scalability towards AI assistance for data and content searching. All of this within the upfront cost plan.

Aaron Kroger: Data management should be handled just the same regardless of where the data is being stored. The cloud should be treated as just another storage medium, albeit a more flexible one. By utilizing media asset management solutions data is presented centralized to the user while in the backend rules and automation are driving its location and storage tiering.

Industry Insights: Navigating the future of broadcast workflows

Industry Insights: Remote production, automation and efficiency in broadcast workflows