As our life becomes more digitalized, analog media seem to slowly lose their importance. Consumers tend to prefer more “portable” content with instant access. And as if that’s not enough, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, making the Media & Entertainment industry double its efforts to satisfy the needs of the customers. The sky-rocketing demand for streamable media provided by various VOD platforms allowed some of them to grow considerably. Many problems are bound to come as they grow, however. What are the challenges Media & Entertainment industry has to face nowadays? Can Iagon solve any of these problems? Read on and see.
Cloud adoption
It’s rather obvious that currently, the industry relies increasingly on cloud services. Media & Entertainment companies have to be able to distribute their content across the whole world. Sticking to their own infrastructure would translate to enormous costs, and could lead to other technological problems. Cloud solutions are safe, cost-efficient, and ensure seamless media access for consumers around the globe.
Let’s not forget there are still tonnes of fragile analog audio and videotapes around. Digitalizing them secures the content and solves the problem of high storage costs. Transferring the data to the cloud relieves the owners of such materials of having to worry about backup copies and maintaining the IT infrastructure required for storing those copies.
Caution ahead
Although simply migrating to the cloud might be sufficient for now, it will not do the trick for long. The fast-paced and ever-changing market holds various challenges for the industry.
One of the main concerns is the unpredictable demand. The global lockdown illustrated this perfectly. People were forced to stay at home, which resulted in an enormous increase in the consumption of online content.
This raises the question of whether the platforms can keep up in terms of performance. Media consumers do not care about just the size of the online library. Reliability of service needs to be put into the equation as well. Malfunctioning interface and service downtimes can enable users to change their content provider of choice.
As their media libraries grow bigger, Media & Entertainment companies need to spend more and more on keeping them up. Storage or computing costs need to be calculated into budgets, and at this scale, they can be astronomical. This is why content providers are investigating new ways of reducing such expenses. One of such ideas is dividing data into high-performance tiers (for the most popular, so-called “hot” data) and higher-latency tiers (for “cold” data). The funds saved this way can then be spent on the production of new titles, licenses, etc.
Media & Entertainment companies need to consider the privacy of their customers, as well as the safety of personal information. Confidential data like names, addresses, or bank details are needed to handle subscriptions. All this information must be protected against data leaks resulting in potential identity theft etc.
Finally, it has been observed that some companies are reluctant to move their critical resources to the cloud for fear of vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in occurs when a company finds itself locked into a certain cloud provider. Due to some proprietary standards, once a database is set up, it might be extremely difficult to move it to a different provider. This is a serious problem if your provider changes their software and it doesn’t meet your expectations, the quality of service deteriorates, or the provider goes out of business.
Addressing the problems
Can any of the challenges described above be tackled by Iagon? Let’s think about potential use cases.
Leveraging the potential of the blockchain, Iagon’s cloud computing platform might be the perfect cure to potential performance problems resulting from the rapid upscaling of the service. Encoding or transmitting multiple materials on the fly should not be a problem, as we’re aiming to provide a reliable solution in the form of a supercomputer “fueled” by computational resources provided by our users.
Iagon’s shared storage platform is designed to utilize the spare storage space offered by individuals and enterprises at competitive prices. However, we are considering the possibility of reclaiming the unused storage space in large data centers all over the world. As those servers are constantly up for no apparent reason anyway, such a move could help reduce the carbon footprint of the media streaming industry. Additionally, all the available customization options we offer should allow for easy tiering of hot and cold data to further reduce operational costs of Media & Entertainment companies.
As security is almost synonymous with the blockchain, it’s no wonder Iagon’s solution might prove useful for our clients. After all, the need for secure personal information storage is the very reason Iagon is here! It is our mission to provide individuals and companies across the globe with a perfect tool for storing vulnerable data. Encrypted and sharded files distributed across a decentralized network are virtually unretrievable by anyone who’s not authorized to access them.
Finally, our plans to achieve interoperability and become a multi-chain operator should solve the problem of potential vendor lock-in. The possibility of moving data onto, between, and out of blockchains may incentivize streaming platforms to migrate to the cloud with less reluctance.
Onwards!
The Iagon team is working hard to push the cloud revolution further by providing a secure, scalable, reliable, and efficient solution for cloud users. We are convinced that cloud services are the future of the industry, and - by offering innovative tools - we want to be at the forefront, where developments are taking place. If you’re interested in the details, you’ll find them in our whitepaper so grab yourself a cup of coffee and take a look!
