Speaking about the cloud at last week's SMPTE Annual Technical Conference, Al Kovalick said "This is big business, and if we think we are the tail wagging the dog, we are wrong." Mr Kovalick (pictured), founder of Media Systems Consulting, acknowledged that a certain amount of hype surrounds the topic, but said "this trend has legs and it will most definitely impact the media facility".
Formerly a strategist at Hewlett-Packard and Avid, Mr Kovalick will give the keynote presentation at an upcoming EBU workshop on broadcasters and the cloud. Many broadcasters are wondering if they should embrace it, when and for what part of their business operations.
Kovalick believes it could provide applications including ingest, download, review and approval, storage/archive, editing, transcoding and rendering. What is still missing is real time control and capabilities to support live events.
Out of the Cloud, into the light? will be a one and a half day workshop to gather together experts and managers that must make or advise on strategic decisions for their organizations in this area. This highly interactive workshop will aim to demystify cloud technologies for broadcasters, cutting through the marketing buzz and identifying the real world use cases and business opportunities that exist.
“We want to stimulate realistic and practical discussions so the participants can go back to their organizations with an understanding that will help inform the important decisions that need to be made,” says EBU’s Félix Poulin.
The workshop is open to all and is free for EBU Members. Information and registration at: tech.ebu.ch/cloudworkshop