Surprisingly for a field that is rich in technical and engineering talent, the media and broadcast sectors are definitely not early adopters of new IT technologies (if they adopt at all!) and models. But now as broadcasters look to boost their bottom line, they are increasingly exploring whether and how they can leverage cloud technologies and models, as media systems consultant Al Kovalick points out here.

As broadcasters undertake these conversations, it is worth keeping in mind the lessons emerging from the other industries like banking, financial services, and telecom.

• Cloud requires new skills and newer approaches. Enterprises are quickly realizing that success in the cloud requires different focus areas and new skills. For instance, it puts new emphasis on application management. While cloud resources may be consumed on-demand, it is also necessary to turn the tap off when not needed - something that calls for a greater resource management and optimization techniques than before. The highly publicized outages of Amazon cloud services last year served as a wake up call for putting in place different Disaster Recovery strategies.


• Attractiveness of cloud economics is not a foregone conclusion. Aside from the technical considerations and analyzing how well the requirements can be met by the available cloud services, it is also worth taking a closer look at the cost-calculus. Pricing models prevalent in the cloud (e.g. per-user / month) look attractive for small to medium businesses, but for large enterprises, the per-user model is not necessarily cheaper. In my previous consulting work in the not too recent past for large global enterprises, when the capacity requirements are high, I have seen the scale tip in favor of building out their data centers over cloud providers. 


• Don't be surprised....but cloud models not fully mature yet. From a technical standpoint, in addition to the performance and security requirements, we examined the readiness of the cloud file sharing services (file sharing is a key requirement in broadcast) -- and the current state of the market is not very encouraging.


• Understand implications of higher OpEx for your business. The argument of capital avoidance in favor of operational expenses is also worth examining in light of your own situation. Depending on investment cycles, some companies prefer an upfront outlay instead of recurring expenses.

• Have realistic expectations to avoid disappointment. As a way for broadcasters to test the waters and ease into it, Al Kovalick identifies candidates for the cloud in the broadcast chain.  But setting the right expectations around what can be achieved initially is also very important. As many enterprises that have switched to Gmail have found, in the larger scheme of things the savings may represent just a drop in the ocean.

In sum, cloud or no-cloud, just deploying web tools and browser based applications can go a long way in improving the current state of collaboration for cross-functional teams distributed across geographies and spanning organizational boundaries.