Al Kovalick

The SMPTE-defined Serial Digital Interface, and the switching ecosystem surrounding it, is the king of video transport technology in the media facility.

At SMPTE’s Annual Technical Conference in Hollywood in late October, I had the privilege of chairing the session, “The Move to the all-IT Media Facility.”

There is no stopping media apps and processes migrating to the public cloud.

A few years ago, the thought of running a TV channel’s infrastructure on a public cloud was considered abhorrent to many broadcasters.

By now you have likely heard some of the hype about “Software Defined Everything.

Please nod if you enjoy installing standalone programs on a PC, Mac or Linux desktop.

In the context of an end user running a media-focused application, what parameters create an environment such that the user cannot discern if the app is running locally or in a remote cloud?

We are swimming in the cloud. Consider how universal the cloud is with the Web services of apps, email, search, social, games, video, music, messaging, docs, personal storage and so much more.

From a nonscientific survey, about 3–5 percent of the 1,600 vendors at NAB 2013 had breakthrough products, meaningful advances in technology, and bold new ideas related to IT/IP/cloud.

For sure, it’s not easy to create an invisible cloud environment. There are many aspects of Quality of Service that determine the user experience.

Metadata has two broad definitions. One is “structured data about data” while another definition comes from the Greek meaning of meta—alongside, that is “alongside” that being described.

Maybe some are forgetting how universal the cloud is today with Web services of email, search, social, video, messaging, docs, personal storage and so much more.

There is little doubt that compute virtualization has changed the data center forever.

Each week the big cloud vendors generate enough heat and noise to confuse most onlookers. One relatively impartial observer of the scene is the vendor RightScale.

A loose definition of “gestalt” is “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Not too long ago, the words “public cloud” and “media enterprise” had almost nothing in common.

The days are dwindling when a media production/broadcast company can ignore the public cloud for apps, processing and storage.

Media facilities—some production, post-production, broadcast ops—still have strong components of AV-specific gear. Much of this infrastructure is not IT/cloud-friendly.