“there is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer”
This is how the quote goes, almost permanently redistributed in social media as an asinine way of trying to downplay the positive impact of cloud services. Originally it was a good message regarding security in using the cloud (that you still had to have some), but many people have extended it to apply to the broader concept of cloud services as a whole but not in a positive way of course.
If you believe the cloud is only just someone else’s computer then we believe you are fundamentally misjudging and misunderstanding it. Cloud is more than the virtualization and outsourcing of your computer infrastructure, it is the fundamental change to your operations and development, to your techniques, methods and processes of delivering services that use computing power both within your organisation and ultimately to your customers. It is cultural change, process change, and business change all wrapped up with the enabler of the technology.
These changes can include movement from waterfall to agile, lean methods, continuous integration, continuous deployment, DevOps, A/B testing and other approaches to adapting to sharper delivery. Fundamentally the move to cloud is about becoming speedier, improve quality, deliver more often and more dependably, fail fast, succeed faster and more importantly focus on your business and not the plumbing.
To take a historical analogy, in the 1890s when municipal electricity generation expansion took power generation for industrial manufacture out of the factory and the factory owners hands, did they complain about the loss of utility? The loss of security of supply? the loss of control? They probably did, but those that took advantage and moved their power needs out to that cloud could focus on their business better and not in the plumbing, and barring a few select industries no one runs their own power generating plan today and have taken advantage of the flick of the switch and changed their companies accordingly. In fact there is a great analogy of those who still generate their own power today for those companies looking at hybrid private/public cloud.
The video industry (or TV or Media or OTT or whatever you want to describe yourself as) has been taking steps to adopt these new delivery and infrastructure approaches, and we firmly believe you should be looking at how you can too. So if you are not reviewing and rearchitecting your organisation to take advantage of what virtualising your computer infrastructure and ‘cloudifying’ it does then you really should. Don’t be the person who shares or likes the graphic, understand really what cloud can do for you. Why not read our whitepaper on Agile and DevOps within the Video Industry to get a quick introduction and hear what key industry people think about it.
Fairmile West is a consulting and professional services company working in the video and broadband industry across five distinct practices of Technology Advisory, Service Delivery, Video Services, Consumer Devices and Business Development. To discuss how Cloud can improve your effectiveness, do contact our Service Delivery practice via email or via our Contact page.