Accelerate media and entertainment innovation using cloud solutions in AWS Marketplace

A 2023 Forrester survey reveals that four out of five media and entertainment (M&E) decision-makers say it is important that their organization uses cloud-based technology solutions. This same survey also reports that 40 percent do not feel their organization is prepared to compete with its current cloud infrastructure.

These findings illustrate the importance the M&E industry places on cloud adoption while also indicating challenges. M&E leaders seeking to deliver personalized, reliable, high-quality content are finding cloud solutions can help by enabling efficient and cost-effective creation and delivery workflows.

I recently moderated a webinar that delves into Forrester’s research on cloud adoption within M&E organizations. The webinar, Accelerate M&E innovation using cloud solutions, highlights the innovations and challenges that come with cloud transformation. Industry leaders from Forrester, Kaltura, M2A Media, and Mux joined me to discuss the cloud trends they’re seeing across the M&E industry.

In this post, I overview the findings presented by Forrester and share excerpts from our insightful Q&A discussion.

M&E providers struggle with security, skills, and scale, but providers can overcome these obstacles

Will McKeon-White, analyst for Forrester, opened the webinar with a high-level conclusion from his company’s survey of 623 M&E industry decision-makers. “M&E organizations struggle with security, skills, and scale today,” he said. “To succeed with cloud and achieve their objectives, they must develop and employ strategies to overcome these three hurdles simultaneously.”

What objectives are M&E organizations looking to achieve?

Figure 1 shows the top priorities are experience, differentiation, and analytics, according to Forrester’s research.

Figure 1: Top priorities identified by M&E leaders

McKeon-White offered strategies to help M&E providers overcome the impediments that accompany cloud transformation. I highlight four of these strategies in the following table.

Q&A with M&E industry leaders

Following McKeon-White’s presentation, the other panelists joined the conversation to share how Forrester’s research results aligned with their experiences. Each is a leader at companies that provide cloud-based M&E solutions in AWS Marketplace.

Read on for excerpts from the Q&A session. You can view the Accelerate M&E innovation using cloud solutions webinar for the full panelist discussion.

Q: One in three surveyed say they plan to increase cloud-based technology investment. What innovations would help monetize this additional spending?

A: Adam Brown, Chief Technology Officer, Mux

“Cloud tech is just generally a better return on investment from a total cost of ownership perspective, iteration speeds, and development speeds. From a development speed perspective, we talk a lot about getting the abstraction level to where customers can cost-effectively match product usage to their use case.”

A: Shuki Eytan, General Manager Media and Telecom, Kaltura

“We have found that there is no single thread monetization strategy to allow cloud TV providers or media companies to succeed. We see media content providers betting on different kinds of monetization streams altogether, such as subscription video on demand (SVOD), advertising video on demand (AVOD), pay-per-view, and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST). We also see providers implementing AI capabilities for core services such as search, analytics, recommendations, and content discovery. And we’ll see even more of that in 2024.”

Q: The research reveals that 45 percent of organizations lack key technology skill sets. As you onboard new customers, how do you address this challenge?

 A: Matt Hughes, Chief Commercial Officer, M2A Media

“In the past, we were doing installations ourselves. We were making sure that everything was up and running. It took a lot of effort from our side, so we wanted to make the product more easily available and robust. We’ve stepped back from this a little bit, and those same teams that were doing installation are now doing training. It’s important with cloud that you’re engaging with the client in the right way, not saying, ‘Here you go, go have fun with this.’ Rather, you want to give them proper training, and the training is everlasting.”

Q: We’re awash in data. How do we ensure it has integrity and is actionable?

 A: Will McKeon-White, Analyst, Forrester

“Automation here is very important. One of the breakdown points we see in organizations that no longer trust their data is something isn’t happening in a routine enough manner. It is reliant on some manual process, some transformation that is going through a team to be turned into something useful. This slows down everything, and you can’t necessarily get real-time insights. If data is reconciled in an automated way, it can be transformed into real-time insights, even when coming from multiple data streams.”

A: Adam Brown, Chief Technology Officer, Mux

“Data operations and governance are just hard engineering work, whether in the cloud or not. And so operational reliability is really important. This all ultimately goes back to making sure you’re choosing a tool chain that is reliable and that you can iterate on.

“It’s one thing to get a data system stood up; it’s another to continuously integrate new data and keep it reliable and actionable. Transparency, especially in methodology, is super important for that. Access to inspecting that underlying data at all points along the chain is important as well.”

Q: What future challenges and opportunities do you see in this space?

 A: Shuki Eytan, General Manager, Media and Telecom, Kaltura

“In my domain, I think we’ll see more media and telco customers converging to provide one service with advantages from both sides. Telco brings the network, users, and data. Media brings marketing and branding capabilities and, of course, the content. And what is more natural than doing this in the cloud?”

A: Matt Hughes, Chief Commercial Officer, M2A Media

“Everybody wants to do everything faster, cheaper, and better. The cycle repeats itself every year, and I don’t think that’s going to change. Can AI help with that? Sure. We’re looking at how we can do that within the orchestration layer and offer resilience with AI. How do we make sure things don’t go wrong, and how can AI help? When something does go wrong, how can we implement a fix faster, and how can AI help? That’s a big topic for us, and it’s proven to be very useful.”

About AWS Marketplace and next steps

How can your organization begin addressing challenges like those discussed in the webinar?

AWS Marketplace has a wide variety of solutions to help M&E providers modernize their infrastructures. AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software, services, and data. It offers quick, easy, and secure deployment, flexible consumption and contract models, and streamlined procurement and billing operations. More than 330,000 organizations large and small use AWS Marketplace monthly to accelerate digital transformation and improve efficiencies across their enterprises.

Independent research from Forrester estimates it takes half the time to find, buy, and deploy a solution through AWS Marketplace compared to other sales channels.

Visit Media & Entertainment Solutions in AWS Marketplace to discover tools that accelerate content creation, streamline asset management, and reliably distribute content.

View Accelerate M&E innovation using cloud solutions to learn more about the topics discussed in this post.

About the author

Matt Jessell is the Global Category Lead for Media and Entertainment and Consumer Gaming for AWS Marketplace Technology Partnerships. He has two decades of experience scaling businesses, multiplying revenue through strategic partnerships, and growing market share. Before joining AWS, Matt held leadership roles at M&E startups and Fortune 50 companies, including The Walt Disney Company, Wired, and Spotter.