Metrics and Monitoring: Cloud Economics

Sometimes, having your head in the clouds is a good thing. Even better? Having your system in the cloud.

Cloud economics promise features such as enhanced flexibility, improved efficiency, and reduced costs. However, for many media service providers, navigating expenses, optimising workflows and monitoring storage resources proves to be enough to put them off; and who can blame them?

Many of those running broadcasting, satellite and post-production companies are now faced with the challenges of opaque cloud expenses, data usage uncertainties and looming egress fees. All of this is enough to fuel the insecurities felt by many in the post-production industry towards cloud economics.

In the second of our series of blogs on metrics and monitoring, we explore the features of cloud-based economics and how they can easily transform your post-production workflow.

To make the most out of the cloud, you first need to optimise cloud economics. Broadcast, satellite, and post-production companies are required to plan system integration around their workflows, and once implemented, manage the resources used carefully. Monitoring your workflows, usage and storage is vital at every stage in the integration of cloud economics.

As a media service provider, it is crucial to create a sense of clarity surrounding storage metrics and egress fees. That way, you know your way around, and can get to grips with monitoring. By doing this, you can optimise the need-based consumption model, which ensures that you only pay for the resource that you need. To maximise this opportunity in the cloud, it’s a good idea to educate yourself and gain the knowledge you need to be able to manage and monitor your cloud resources effectively.

Resource pooling is a term used in cloud computing, referring to the sense of infinite or immediately available resources for customer use, produced on a meta level.

This is achieved by controlling resource adjustment at a meta level. It often occurs with providers that serve multiple clients and customers with provisional and scalable services. These services can then be pooled and adjusted to suit each individual client’s needs without any changes becoming apparent to the client on the other end.

For most post-production, broadcast and satellite companies, having all hands-on deck is a pretty regular occurrence, meaning that resource pooling is a highly valued feature in that scenario. It’s an efficient and advantageous way of maximising optimisation and ensuring that every user workspace is functioning as it should be. Resource pooling is simply another benefit of cloud economics that is best optimised for use by media service providers.

We mentioned egress fees earlier, and why they might be a scary prospect to anyone considering a move to the cloud.

Egress fees refer to the charge you incur when moving your data out of the cloud to another destination. As you can imagine, these costs can quickly escalate if media providers fail to manage their workflows and optimise cloud resources. Egress fees, for this reason, are one of the main factors towards media service, broadcast and satellite providers deciding against a move to the cloud.

However, with careful attention to detail and meticulous monitoring of workflows, it is possible to achieve an optimal overview of your resources, control egress fees and avoid unnecessary costs. By maximising your ability to keep an eye on your workflows, and only use the resources you need, the cloud becomes your friend, and the benefits are specific to the requirements of your company.

Working in a fully in-premises environment is becoming rarer by the day, and for good reason. Traditionally, storage would be limited to your office or production space, but that is all changing with the introduction of cloud economics.

Hybrid and fully remote or cloud-based working environments are now becoming the norm, and this brings with it a whole host of benefits for the industry. With the freedom of cloud-based servers, specifically hybrid cloud servers, your storage can be optimised and personalised with on-premises and off-premises data centres. To achieve cloud-cost efficiency, it is essential that media service providers use the right cloud platform for their needs and gather a combination of solutions that maximise your storage requirements. You need to consider everything from volume of data, data usage format and how often it is moved for the most optimal metrics set-up.

With all these factors to consider, it’s important to find the right platform for your requirements within the cloud.

In an industry that is moving rapidly towards multi-user, sharable and cooperative compatibility, maximising your software platforms in the same way is a wise move.

By optimising your cloud economics, you are stepping up the game in post-production and broadcasting and evolving with the industry.

If you need a simple to use management platform for your remote edit environments, take a look at Lens, and request a demo.