IBM Sales and Distribution Media and Entertainment

Thought Leadership White Paper

Cloud Computing
for the Media and
Entertainment Industry
2 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
Contents
1 Executive Summary
4 Introduction
8 IBM takes a leadership role to address cloud industry
issues and challenges
13 IBM recommendations for successful cloud
27 General recommendations
29 IBM Global Business Service cloud “get started” and
“keep going” offerings
30 Cloud computing resources
Executive Summary
Challenges facing media executives
These are very turbulent times for media executives. Media
CEOs are having to adapt their business models at an
unprecedented rate. How will media companies manage to
keep pace with the ever-accelerating rate of innovation? How
will media companies maintain competitive advantage over
new entrants? Are there cloud consumption models that are
appropriate for media companies to pursue? Should media
companies be leaders or adopters?
Market forces and landscape of media
and entertainment
The new reality is that the consumer is in the eye of the storm.
Where there was once a scarcity of content, now there is a
seemingly unlimited supply coming from traditional media
sources as well as new media and social network Internet sites
via more and more portable consumer devices. It is estimated
that by 2012 there will be one trillion devices connected to the
Internet and 50 billion of them will be mobile phones.
Media cloud evolution
As a result of these challenges, media executives are having to
rethink their supply chain. We are learning that the troika of
service-oriented architecture (SOA), digital supply chain, and
cloud is evolving into the blueprint for enjoying innovation
with the potential to reduce capital expense and operating
expense. This triad of technologies, SOA, digital supply chain,
and cloud will enable media companies to keep pace with
turbulent times by providing:
• Faster time to market
• Increased sales by increasing exposure to content
• A richer flow of information to adapt quickly to changing
consumer interests and demand
• Decreased labor, inventory, and working capital costs
• Faster, fresher content packaged, identified, and available to
the right consumer anywhere, anytime
Content that is available “forever” as deep catalog or digital
inventory that has the potential able to produce a revenue
stream over the Long Tail or for years to come.
Media companies are looking for ways to innovate without
compromising their content ownership and digital rights.
Cloud providers must be aware that security and content
protection are key issues that media executives care about.
IBM® has been involved in cloud computing from the
beginning, was one of the original co-authors of the Cloud
Manifesto in 2009, and continues to be the media and
entertainment industry’s trusted partner: a partner that
brings innovation when and where it provides value; not
technology for its own sake; and, only when it strengthens
clients’ strategic goals and objectives. IBM provides facilities,
hardware and software, and professional services to match our
clients’ needs, budget and their optimal cloud deployment
model. IBM appreciates that media consumers, along with
media assets, both hold the highest value to media companies.

IBM has been involved in cloud computing
from the beginning, was one of the original
co-authors of the Cloud Manifesto in 2009,
and continues to be the media and
entertainment industry’s trusted partner.
Working closely with our clients, IBM continues
to extend digital supply chains reliably and securely to create
new revenue streams that pursue the right customers with
the right content.
“What do I have to do?”—IBM Recommendations
Media companies must understand where they are in
developing their digital supply chain and how they can best
utilize SOA and cloud computing to augment and improve it.
The application of technology to enrich the digital supply
chain and to improve competitive advantage will depend upon
a wide variety of factors. However, a generic strategy for a
media company might include combinations of these elements,
all of which are related to digital supply chain, and all of which
IBM has a history of successfully delivering to media clients:
• Build digital archives (convert analog assets to digital assets):
Digitize assets, store them on-site and off-site applying best
practices in storage and asset management.
• Leverage the digital archive to support on-going production
services.
• Protect assets using encrypted communications
(authentication, authorization) and the encryption of content.
• Provide analytics to support pricing, product mix, release date,
and placement decisions.
• Provide separate portals for business-to-business (B2B) and
business-to-consumer (B2C) processes to support branding
and consumer experience.
IBM Sales and Distribution 3
• Provide e-commerce and storefront capabilities with ad
insertion capability.
• Support subscription and pay-per-view models.
• Maintain control over the cloud’s content delivery resources:
Prevent rogue applications from over-consuming resources
using SOA governance capabilities.
• Integrate enterprise legacy and backend systems—such as
enterprise resource management (ERP), customer relationship
management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM)—
with external cloud services.
Why IBM?
IBM appreciates that the journey will be different for each
media company. IBM is a trusted partner offering proven
technology, products, and professional services. IBM is focused
on creating value and delivering meaningful solutions. Media
companies and IBM share the key values of reliability and
security. IBM is a global company that supports open
standards, oversees complex projects, brings relevant emerging
technologies to market, and stays in the trenches with our
clients from the development of strategy through the ongoing
implementations of new solutions and business models.
IBM believes that enhancing the digital supply chain with
cloud computing holds the key to providing cost-effective,
extra-enterprise content processing services that can extend
and enhance media companies’ core competencies and enable
them to compete and thrive in today’s consumer-centric
marketplace. Cloud computing represents a fresh approach to
outsourced and managed services solutions, which have long
been salient IBM capabilities. This paper is intended to provide
media executives with new business insights into how cloud
computing can extend their core enterprise capabilities, and it
will provide some guidance, current and future offerings and
step-by-step recommendations for help along the unique
journey each company will take to reach its goals.
4 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
Introduction
Today, economic pressures are forcing media companies
to alter the way they do business. We live in an “attention
economy” and compete for the ever-changing attention
of consumers. Our customers and consumers are more
demanding and less loyal than ever before. Advertising as a
source of revenue isn’t what it used to be. Media companies
cannot simply raise prices or sell more advertising to attain
profit goals, and there is not much room left to cut from
operating expenses. In today’s economy, there is an increased
focus on the effectiveness of digital supply chains. However,
merely reacting well in today’s attention economy is not
sufficient to survive financially.
Media CEOs are adapting their business models at a rapid
pace. How will media companies keep up with the ever-
accelerating rate of innovation in the new economic
environment? How will media companies maintain competitive
advantage over new entrants? Are there cloud consumption
models that are appropriate for media companies to pursue?
Should media companies be leaders or adopters?
Using cloud computing, media companies are
developing new and better ways to quickly and
efficiently deliver content to fine-grained
targeted consumers.
Media companies are responding with new ways to enhance
their digital supply chains using cloud computing. Using cloud
computing, media companies are developing new and better
ways to quickly and efficiently deliver content to fine-grained
targeted consumers. In other words, media companies are
looking to the cloud to enhance their digital supply chain—
adding specific media processing services—while reducing
operating expenses. There is considerable talk about how cloud
computing can help reduce capital expenses; however, this is
less likely for large, mature media companies than it is for
small-to-medium media companies. Small-to-medium
businesses (SMBs) are likely to be more eager to outsource
content storage and content processing than the very large
media companies since it is difficult to increase capital and
operating expenses. Large media companies are likely to have
developed highly efficient custom enterprise systems that are
not likely to be replaced by generic or composite services in
the cloud. Also, large media companies are likely to have
decentralized storage pools in multiple physical data centers
presenting access complexities and limitations. There is also
the issue of how much content is still in analog formats.
However, no media company can afford more capital expenses
merely to accommodate seasonal needs or for resources that
are not fully utilized.
The greatest opportunities for media companies are available
wherever content storage, media processing and distribution
services are co-located. Just as economies of scale become
available to media companies seeking to reduce their cost per
gigabyte (GB) to $0.10 or less, processing services economies
of scale become available when the range and intensity of
content services are co-located with the content itself. For
example, it is becoming clearer that processing services are not
standalone services. If large video files need to be transcoded, it
is probably not cost effective to merely transcode these files
since the communication costs may be too great. However,
when transcoding services and other content processing
services are co-located with the content, the communication
costs become a proportionately smaller part of the overall cost.

Media companies will need to prepare themselves to make the
journey and take advantage of these evolving media clouds.
While few media clouds exist today, they will evolve over time
along paths of greatest return, in terms of time to market and
the ability to distribute more B2B and B2C content to more
consumers for the least investment.
Cloud computing represents many
opportunities for media companies to improve
their competitive advantage by getting content
to multichannel, three-screen (or even
four-screen) markets faster than ever before
while potentially reducing costs.
Cloud computing represents many opportunities for media
companies to improve their competitive advantage by getting
content to multichannel, three-screen (or even four-screen)
markets faster than ever before while potentially reducing
costs. This paper begins by looking at how cloud deployments
have been done in the past. It reviews the promises and risks
associated with cloud computing, what media and IT industries
are doing to address these opportunities and risks, and provides
the IBM point of view. It concludes with IBM’s
recommendations and identifies resources that will enable
media companies to enhance their digital supply chain by using
cloud and SOA technologies.
IBM Sales and Distribution 5
The new reality: Consumers at the eye of the storm
Today, the traditional economics of media have been
overturned. Before the Internet, there were limited sources of
content, or what Bob Garfield, author and long-time writer for
Advertising Age, has called the “age of scarcity.” Today, the
supply of content is greater than the demand. Advertising alone
cannot support media delivery. As new business models
emerge, it is clear that the consumer is at the eye of the storm.
Content that cannot be discovered and easily located, played or
downloaded will be forgotten. Media executives now must
rethink their supply chain: The emphasis is on the assets rather
than the medium and consumers are no longer dependent on a
dominant medium for the content they want.
What is the most efficient way to get content to consumers?
What is the best way to reduce time to market? The supply
chain of the past, which focused on the distribution of content
after it was created, is being inverted to focus on the consumer.
IBM believes its key differentiator is being able to bring all the
various technologies, components, services, and business
partners together in these media value chains to create business
value and deliver real-world solutions.
Current and future cloud deployment: What have
others done?
Over the past two years, several surveys have been performed
in an attempt to better understand how companies are using
cloud computing today, and how they plan to use cloud
computing in the future. In 2008, a professional IT journal
study revealed that storage, archiving, and disaster recovery
were the most likely uses and planned uses for cloud
computing. In 2009, an industry analyst published the results
of a study that identified security and performance as the issues
that most concerned executives about cloud computing.
Another study in 2009 showed that less than half of decision-
makers were either using or considering using cloud
computing, and, of those who were planning to use cloud, most
were considering private clouds.
6 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
More recently, a cloud adoption survey was performed that
included nearly 600 respondents responsible for managing
their organization’s IT budget and operations throughout
Canada and the United States in 2009. This survey revealed
some interesting findings:
• Security remains the leading reason for not adopting cloud
computing. Forty-six percent of respondents who indicated
they were not going to adopt cloud computing indicated that
lack of sufficient security was the reason.
• Despite the fact that security and integration issues are users’
biggest fears, this has not dissuaded them from implementing
cloud-based applications.
• The survey shows strong satisfaction with cloud computing
once it has been installed.
• Seventy percent of the decision-making respondents plan to
move additional applications into the cloud; most indicated
they would be doing so within the next year.
• Sixty-two percent of the respondents considered using cloud
computing.
• When those who indicated they were not going to adopt
cloud computing were asked what changes or improvements
would change their minds, 33 percent said maturity of
solutions and 32 percent said better integration.
• Thirty-two percent indicated that existing infrastructure
investments were a reason for not adopting cloud computing.
• Twenty-six percent indicated that integration worries
prevented them from moving to cloud.
• Cost is still the primary motivation for moving to cloud,
however, agility is gaining momentum.
At a recent major software industry event, panelists estimated
that approximately 20 percent of enterprise computing takes
place inside the cloud, while 80 percent, generally the more
mission-critical applications, take place inside the firewall. In
other words, most enterprises are still running their
applications on their own servers in their own data centers.
Cloud gains momentum in media
From the surveys cited, it can be observed that despite the
challenges, cloud computing, mainly due to its economic
attractiveness, continues to grow. There are good reasons to
switch to cloud: low costs, low barriers to entry, increased
mobility and scalability. There has been an emergence of
content clouds recently. As technical and cost barriers fall and
security issues are addressed, the cloud has become a viable
platform not only for back-end operations, but also for key
business practices, including content management and
distribution. During the 2008 presidential election in the
United States, the New York Times online was able to handle
record traffic using cloud technology. The on-demand nature
of massively scalable clouds has enabled media companies to
provide more video on demand (VOD) without having to make
investments in content delivery networks. By harvesting,
hosting and combining their content with other content in the
cloud, publishers and media companies can answer a higher
level of questions for the customer. Consumer demand
rules—getting content to the consumer fast is the key to
cloud success.
This concept of “mix and match” around content is not new;
however, cloud-based distribution of content promises to
enable consumers to use vast amounts of digital content in
ways that currently do not exist. John du Pre Gauntt, the
founder of Media Dojo, describes a digital supply chain
manufacturing cloud that will enable customers to pick and
choose among media titles and how they want to experience
them based on their product or service purchases. The news
source BBC, in its information and archive strategy, describes
moving to an asset-focused approach with enhanced metadata
that will make content searchable and accessible. This
demonstrates the digital archive cloud as another channel.

Gauntt takes this further in his discussion of media scenarios,
describing “smart media” that has been strategically tagged and
will seek out interested consumers regardless of the channel or
consumer device. Until rights management is better controlled
in software as a service, more media companies like The New
York Times will convert their internal application
programming interfaces (APIs) to externally facing APIs on
clouds so that customers can license feeds or download content
and mix it with their own content. For some media companies,
there is a greater willingness to package and price content on
an a la carte basis.
Recently, in a move to increase the ability to earn more
revenue from digital distribution, a consortia of 48 media
companies, called the Digital Entertainment Content
Ecosystem (DECE), agreed to standardize on a common
format and enable proliferation of their content using Neustar
as the cloud-locker along with five digital rights management
formats: digital rights management (DRM) formats (Adobe®
Flash Access, CMLA-OMA V2, the Marlin DRM open
standard, Microsoft® PlayReady and Widevine). Through
cloud computing, entertainment that consumers buy would be
stored in a digital locker, Neustar, and remotely accessed from
any device that meets DECE’s format requirements.
The dark side of clouds
In order to increase the adoption of cloud computing by media
companies, it will be necessary to build trust and confidence.
Public clouds have made the news frequently over the past two
years with major outages (Table 1).
Security and performance issues cannot be controlled by the
media company in the public cloud; these issues represent
dependencies. Not only have there been instances of stolen
content, but there have many cases of stolen online identity.
These issues can be summarized as loss of control by the
content provider.
IBM Sales and Distribution 7
Table 1. Major cloud outages 2008 - 2009
Service Outage Date Duration Source
Amazon S3 02/15/08 4 hours cnet
Amazon EC2 04/07/08 1 hour techcrunch
Amazon S3 07/20/08 8.5 hours amazon
Amazon EC2 06/11/09 7 hours cnet
Amazon EC2 12/09/09 1-5 hours datacenter-
knowledge
Google App 6/17/08 7 hours softpedia
Engine
Google Gmail 07/16/08 2.5 hours pcworld
Google Apps and 08/06/08 about pcworld
Gmail 15 hours
Google Gmail 08/11/08 1.5 hours gmailblog
Google Gmail 08/15/08 more than pcworld
24 hours
Google Gmail 10/16/08 30 hours pcworld
Google Gmail 02/24/09 2.5 hours googleblog
Google Gmail 03/09/09 up to 22 hours cnet
Google network 05/14/09 2 hours arborne-
networks
Google App 07/02/09 6 hours techcrunch
Engine
Google Gmail 09/01/09 2 hours gmailblog
Google Gmail 09/24/09 2.5 hours cnet
Microsoft Hotmail 03/12/09 5 hours network-
world
Microsoft Azure 03/13/09 22 hours network-
world
Microsoft 10/04/09 6 days + cnet
Sidekick total loss of
contact data
Salesforce.com 02/11/08 6 hours zdnet
Salesforce.com 01/06/09 1 hour The Register
8 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
Other important issues that worry public cloud users include
vendor lock-in, or the inability to get information out of the
content, or to transfer it to another cloud provider if the cloud
user deems the service to be unsatisfactory. Cloud computing
continues to mature and address these issues; however, it is
doubtful that many media companies are rushing to put the
crown jewels into public clouds. The best analogy is putting
money in a bank; it takes time to realize this level of trust and
confidence.
Another more obscure issue is data dispersion, or the fact that
the cloud user does not know where the data physically resides.
Countries where content may reside could have very different
laws regarding access and privacy. IT research and advisory
group Gartner, Inc. has identified seven risks:
• Privileged user access: Cloud customers do not know the
background, credentials or police records of those who
administer public clouds. Enterprises generally have physical,
logical and personnel controls.
• Regulatory compliance: Many businesses must be SAS
70-compliant1. Regardless of whether or not one uses a cloud
provider, ultimately it is the customer who is responsible for
the security and integrity of the data or content, even if it is
being managed by a cloud provider.
• Data location: This is another way of describing the data
dispersion problem of not knowing where data and content is
physically located.
• Data segregation: Cloud users assume that their content is
segregated from other users. While encryption helps, users do
not always know or understand what schemes are in effect (or
how effective they are).
• Recovery: Cloud users may not know what will happen to their
content in the event of a disaster.
• Investigative reporting: It may be impossible for some cloud
providers to support investigations of inappropriate or illegal
activities since logs, data and content may be dispersed over
ever-changing hosts and data centers.
• Long-term viability: What are the provisions if the cloud
provider goes out of business or gets acquired by another
company?
IBM takes a leadership role to address
cloud industry issues and challenges
IBM and the Open Cloud Manifesto
In 2009, the Open Cloud Consortium, originally a consortium
of universities, was formed to address the creation of open
standards to provide for inter-cloud interoperability—basically,
a pledge to develop standards that would make it possible to
easily move applications from cloud to cloud. Shortly
thereafter, it was recognized that the corporate computing
industry would need to develop a coordinated approach, which
came in the form of the Open Cloud Manifesto, and was
largely driven by IBM. The resulting document was brief (only
seven pages) but it laid out the basic principles for companies
and cloud suppliers to work together and make it possible to
interoperate between clouds and to provide the flexibility to
switch between suppliers. IBM and 29 other groups agreed to
the Open Cloud Manifesto.
One of the more recent outcomes from the original Open
Cloud Manifesto is the work of the Cloud Computing Use
Case Discussion Group, which continues its efforts today, and
in which IBM continues to be a major contributor. IBM
continues to foster an open discussion about cloud computing,
and created http://cloudusecases.org, as a launch site for our
original work with Google. This group produced an important
white paper, Cloud Computing Use Cases White Paper,
identifying key cloud business scenarios. This white paper is
now in its fourth version focused on service level agreements
(SLAs) and use cases for security compliance. This document
 IBM Sales and Distribution 9

provides easy-to-understand descriptions of cloud service Cloud value drivers

consumer and cloud service provider, as well as descriptions of There are a number of ways that clouds can drive business
the most typical use case scenarios (not intended to be an value. Cloud provides much more than merely a cost-focused
exhaustive list): return on investment (ROI) model:

• End user-to-cloud: Consumer gains access to content through

subscriptions, pay-per-use and/or sponsored advertising
• Enterprise-to–cloud-to-end user: Media company stores archive
content offsite in private cloud and cloud pushes derivative
content to subscribing consumer
• Enterprise-to-cloud: Media company collocates content
distribution services and consumer behavior analytics in the
cloud, and integrates with the cloud to monitor sales and time
to market
• Enterprise-to-cloud-to-enterprise (digital supply chain): Media
companies collaborate on content; for example, studio dailies,
multi-lingual/global production and distribution
• Private cloud: An in-sourced, enterprise-hosted, on-premises
private cloud, or outsourced private cloud managed by an Figure 1. Cloud value drivers help define how business value is created.
external entity
• Changing cloud vendors: Business continuity
• Hybrid cloud (single cloud has characteristics of private cloud
and public cloud): Cloud stores copies of digital masters Cloud value drivers have the potential to transform business
(private cloud); manufactures digital derivatives for B2B and strategy in many ways:
B2C distribution, and may provide storefront capabilities
(public cloud) • Driving business innovation
• Increasing business agility
• Lowering total cost of ownership
• Improving asset utilization and products-services time to
market
• Optimizing technology investments
• Enabling real-time content and metadata sharing
• Providing globally available resources
• SOA and cloud: The dream team
10 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
The media and entertainment industry has been met with
dramatic changes over the last five years that have moved it
from nearly all physical products to predominantly digital
products. Everything associated with the creation of content
has turned from physical goods to digital. While this transition
has opened up new opportunities in delivering new products
and services to consumers (such as new audio and video
delivery services that have evolved to products like iPads), new
challenges have been introduced in understanding where
content is inside the client’s environment, what state it is in,
who needs to get it, and when it needs to be delivered.
Systems and processes have evolved over time to support the
physical creation and distribution of these products and
services. As the content and its delivery environment have
changed, many of these systems have as well, but for the most
part the systems and technologies do not all work well
together. Closed, proprietary and siloed infrastructures must
now give way, or at least harmonize with open, standardized
and more horizontal processes and applications.
Media companies, dealing with a more competitive
environment during difficult economic times, are searching for
ways to minimize their technology costs while, at the same
time, offering more sophisticated products and services. Media
companies’ resources have been organized according to the
specific business functions they support which, as we have
stated, have resulted in the formation of separate application
silos. In response, these separate application silos result in
duplication of application functionality, high integration costs,
underutilization of resources, and limited ability to share
content and information. Media companies’ underlying
technology has become much more complex and less flexible,
making it increasingly difficult to respond and keep pace with
the revolutionary changes in the industry.
Service oriented architecture (SOA) has been increasingly
promoted as a means of addressing the media business’ needs
in a cost-effective and responsive manner. In 2008, Gartner
reported that most European and North American companies
were planning to adopt SOA over the next 12 months. SOA
promises to provide services as the basis of abstraction so that
services are loosely coupled, autonomous, stateless and include
their own explicit quality of service characteristics (security,
performance, etc.).
An SOA is the perfect architecture for cloud because services
run on any system that exposes them, inside or outside the
enterprise. An SOA allows you to manage, orchestrate and use
services and create “situational” applications that are
“composites” of services, which enable business agility. This is
made possible because an SOA provides the following three
fundamental properties:
• Open standards
–– SOA provides a standard method of invoking web
services allowing disparate organizations access to these
services across network boundaries.
–– Web services use open standards to allow inter-
enterprise connectivity across networks and the Internet.
–– Messaging protocols (SOAP) and transport protocols
(including HTTP, HTTPS, JMS)
–– Security can be handled at both the transport level
(HTTPS) and/or at a protocol level (WS-Security).
–– Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) allows
web services to be self-describing for a loosely
coupled architecture.
• Integration
–– Interfaces are provided to wrap service endpoints to
provide a system-independent and application-
independent architecture.
–– SOAs can provide dynamic service discovery and
binding, which means that service integration can
occur on demand.

• Virtualization
–– A key principle of SOA is that services should be
invoked by service requesters that are oblivious to
service implementation details, including location,
platform and if appropriate to the business scenario,
even the identity of the service provider.
All of the properties above are prerequisites to support
services delivered from the cloud. Additionally, if an SOA
framework is to provide the ability to situationally create a
composite service, it must be able to provide the messaging
properties that are required to connect the various services
that comprise the composite service. Messaging properties,
such as persistence, transformation, routing and mediation, are
necessary precursors to be able to support the choreography
of the composite service. Extending these messaging properties
to media objects enables content agility and is the key to
providing an SOA that allows a seamless integration of the
transactional messaging and content essence that exist in all
services that emit or consume digital media.
A cloud based on SOA allows an enterprise’s intra-
organizational business processes to be extended into the
cloud and take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing,
particularly on-demand services and highly scalable IT
services. Cloud computing and SOA combine to form the
“dream team.” Since a cloud is basically an instance of an
architecture, using SOA ensures that cloud computing
provides be the most agile and cost-effective cloud platform.
Cloud computing provides media companies with software-
as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure services (infrastructure-
as-a-service, or IaaS), and platform services (platform-as-a-
service, or PaaS). Considerable pressures exist to meet
consumer demand. However, the development and infra-
structure costs associated with building the technology and
IBM Sales and Distribution 11
the workflows necessary to provide multiple channel content
distribution are too much for many media companies. On
the other hand, doing nothing could mean disintermediation
or, worse, obscurity.
How media companies can benefit from SaaS
SaaS minimizes the upfront costs associated with hardware and
software acquisition and helps companies avoid having to hire
more staff to operate and maintain in-house systems. There are
four basic SaaS models (and combinations that can benefit
media companies):
1. A multi-tenant architecture owned and maintained by a cloud
service provider (ASP-style)
2. Hosted internally and maintained remotely
3. Internally developed and hosted on cloud provider
infrastructure
4. Self-hosted software providing software services to partners or
subscribers
In the future, most internal-facing, media
company enterprise applications will be delivered
in the form of reliable and secure services using
private networks and the Internet.
In addition, there are various combinations of the basic models.
In the future, most internal-facing, media company enterprise
applications will be delivered in the form of reliable and secure
services using private networks and the Internet.
12 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
How media companies can benefit from IaaS
IBM offers IaaS by using core competencies in various
infrastructure technologies, including cluster computing,
autonomic computing, grid computing, utility computing and
virtualization. IaaS benefits media companies by providing
elastic or scalable infrastructure on demand to handle
traffic and content overflow situations. IaaS uses statistical
multiplexing to increase and shrink resource utilization.
Some estimates are that statistical multiplexing reduces
resource utilization costs by a factor of five to seven.
A mission-critical, enterprise-scale cloud provider must
possess large-scale reliable and secure fundamental
infrastructure resources: data centers, managed services,
massively scalable storage, massively scalable processing
and secure network connections.
Figure 2. IBM North Carolina Leadership Data Center
IBM has been building large data centers for years, offering
these benefits:
• Reliability: An IBM data center typically provides 99.99
percent up time.
• Smarter data center management: Thousands of sensors,
connecting IT equipment, data center and building
automation systems, provide data that can be analyzed for
future capacity planning, conserve energy and maintain
operations in the event of a power outage.
• Energy efficiency: An IBM data center uses half the energy cost
to operate compared to data centers of similar size by taking
advantage of free cooling—using the outside air to cool the
data center. Intelligent systems use sensors to continuously
read temperature and relative humidity throughout the data
center and dynamically adjust cooling in response to changes
in demand.
• Cloud computing capability: Support for cloud computing
workloads allows clients to use only the resources necessary
to support IT operations at any given moment—eliminating
the need for up to 70 percent of the hardware resource that
might have been previously needed to perform the same task.
The data center also hosts recently announced “Smart
Business” cloud computing offerings—each of these solutions
can significantly reduce a client’s total cost of ownership
(TCO) by up to 40 percent.
• Built for expansion: Due to an innovative modular design
method, IBM will be able to add significant future capacity in
nearly half the time it would take traditional data centers to
expand. This design/build method, called IBM Enterprise
Modular Data Center (IBM EMDC), also enables IBM to
rapidly scale capacity to meet demand by adding future space,
power and cooling to the data center with no disruption to
existing operations. This means up to 40 percent of capital
costs and up to 50 percent of operational costs may be
deferred until client demand necessitates expansion. An IBM
data center can also quickly and seamlessly expand its power
and cooling capacity.

How media companies can benefit from PaaS
Finally, as a layer built on top of IaaS, PaaS offers media
companies consistent services such as authentication,
authorization, data persistence and task scheduling. PaaS
has been a topic of interest with telcos since they already
provide content, storage, and connectivity services to
consumers and businesses. Telcos are providing their existing
IaaS as a platform for B2B and B2B2C digital supply chains.
IBM is building digital media exchange clouds supporting
comprehensive content aggregation, management, derivative
manufacturing, and multichannel distribution built on top
of clients’ outsourced and managed services.
IBM is building digital media exchange
clouds supporting comprehensive content
aggregation, management, derivative
manufacturing, and multichannel distri-
bution built on top of clients’ outsourced
and managed services.
The IBM SOA software group framework
To support the digital supply chain, IBM Software Group
has developed the IBM Media Enterprise Framework built
on SOA architecture using IBM software. Cloud computing
provides a way to virtualize the service executions, security
and infrastructure. Media Enterprise framework can work
with the cloud in realizing the capabilities, such as business
analytics and optimization, media, metadata and information
management, multi-channel enablement, business process
transformation, security and infrastructure management.
The Media Enterprise Framework can be used as a delivery
platform to help manage the services in each of the capabilities.
IBM Sales and Distribution 13
IBM recommendations for successful cloud
Digital supply chain
IBM has been looking at how the new business reality impacts
supply chain. By using digital supply chain, media companies
can use their core competencies and call upon clouds to
enhance their supply chain. Clouds are places to store, process,
distribute and support exposure of content in an elastic fashion.
To increase supply chain efficiency and deliver the products
and services consumers want, media companies are looking to a
combined SOA and cloud computing solution.
Using SOA and cloud computing in the new digital supply
chain enables media companies to keep pace with the rate of
innovation. SOA and cloud computing support:
• Faster time to market
• Increased sales by increasing the exposure of content
• Richer flow of information to adapt quickly to changing
consumer interests and demands
• Decreased labor, inventory and working capital costs
• Faster fresh content that is packaged, identified and available
to the consumer
• Available “forever” deep catalog content
IBM’s commitment to digital supply chain
management
IBM structures a digital supply chain that is customer-centric,
responds to new consumer behavior, and is smarter or opti-
mized using business intelligence and analytics. The IBM
Media Enterprise Framework shows IBM’s strong commit-
ment to its clients by taking a “we’re in it together” approach.
Cloud offerings often fail because clients do not perceive that
the cloud provider understands or cares about the client’s
business. IBM’s commitment includes becoming an integral
part of the design and delivery team.
14 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
Leading the evolution of media clouds:
What should I do?
Media companies must understand where they are in
developing their digital supply chain and how they can best
utilize SOA and cloud computing to augment and improve it.
The application of technology to enrich the digital supply
chain and to improve competitive advantage will depend upon
a wide range of factors. However, a generic strategy for a media
company might include combinations of these elements, all of
which are related to digital supply chain, and all of which IBM
has a history of successfully delivering to media clients:
• Build digital archives (convert analog assets to digital assets)
and store digitized assets on-site and off-site, applying best
practices in storage and asset management.
• Develop an enterprise-wide strategy for standards-based
metadata creation, discovery, use and exchange.
• Protect assets using encrypted communications
(authentication, authorization) and the encryption of content.
• Provide separate portals for B2B and B2C to support
branding and consumer experience.
• Provide e-commerce and storefront capabilities with an ad
insertion capability.
• Support subscription and pay-per-view models.
• Maintain control over the cloud’s content delivery resources
by preventing rogue applications from over-consuming
resources.
• Integrate enterprise legacy and backend systems with external
cloud services.
The journey begins at the same spot for every media
company—digitizing content, to create the new digital supply
chain. IBM recommends that media companies begin with
their digital archive as a means of building a pilot to explore
the use of a private or public cloud. Deployment models can be
as simple as an in-house, in-sourced, on-premises managed
service model to a full hybrid cloud that is fully integrated with
the media company’s enterprise systems. There are several
reasons to begin with the archive:
• The archive is not in the production-critical path; therefore,
there is less risk to current mission-critical processes. At the
same time, there are likely to be hidden treasures in the
archive, or, what retailers used to call “deep catalog.”
• Most media companies store copies of their assets. Some
media companies are applying approved asset preservation
and disaster recovery budgets to justify private cloud archive
initiatives.
• Most media companies have a mix of analog and digital
content in their on-premises archives. Some of the digital
content may be stored off-site as part of the disaster recovery
and business continuity policies.
• Media companies can develop their metadata strategy
(metadata creation, discovery, use, and exchange) in a
deliberate and controlled pace rather than being driven by the
demands of live events and live content.
IBM GA cloud offering use cases and
media and entertainment specific use cases
It is important to separate media and entertainment use cases
into two groups: (1) generic use cases, or, those use cases that
can be used regardless of the industry environment, and (2)
media and entertainment-specific use cases that address
specific needs in the media and entertainment industry.
Generic use cases may provide value to those media companies
considering how best to “wade into” cloud computing, or those
looking to implement a cloud to demonstrate cost savings and
provide the organization with valuable hands-on experience
and understanding of cloud challenges and benefits. For
example, IT organizations of media companies can
immediately implement the generic use cases to demonstrate
and test the value of cloud computing in supporting workloads
optimized for IT, such as testing of applications and software.

Figure 3. Media and entertainment sub-industries and cloud
use cases
See the first column in Figure 3, which identifies several
generally available IBM cloud offerings:
• IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM cloud subscrip-
tion service helps clients virtualize desktop computing
resources, and provides a logical, rather than a physical,
method of accessing data, computing power, storage capacity
and other resources.
• IBM Compute on Demand infrastructure offering, provides
IBM Sales and Distribution 15
clients access to IBM compute clusters (IBM System x®, IBM
BladeCenter®, IBM System p®, and IBM System Storage®)
on an hourly, weekly or yearly rental basis.
• IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM
cloud is designed to help enterprises reduce operational costs
and large amounts of capital outlays, improve cycle times
for faster time to market and improve quality with virtually
instant, security-rich access to a standardized test and
development environment.
• The IBM Smart Analytics Cloud is a solution offering to
16 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
enable delivery of business intelligence. This offering uses
IBM hardware, software and services to offer a complete
solution enabled at the customer site.
• IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud offers a storage-
virtualization solution designed to support a company’s
storage optimization efforts. It can help alleviate data storage
challenges by enabling quick implementation of a scalable,
global file storage system with flexibility in deployment and
management options.
• IBM Smart Business End User Support self enablement
portal is an Internet-based solution that enables end users
to resolve their support issues due to a leading-edge know-
ledge database that delivers a comprehensive, personalized,
multichannel experience in multiple languages through a
single easy-to-use interface.
• IBM Information Protection Services is a range of managed
services. It includes both on-site and remote data protection
capabilities for your data center servers, applications and
databases, as well as protection for email, laptops and
Figure 4. Common cloud management
desktops, designed to help you quickly back up, restore,
archive and maintain access to critical data on demand.
• IBM LotusLive™ iNotes® is a secure cloud-based messaging
service that provides essential email and calendaring
capabilities. IBM LotusLive iNotes can be integrated
alongside existing enterprise messaging solutions or operated
standalone to reduce overall cost of ownership.
Media and entertainment-specific use cases
Media and entertainment sub-industries and cloud use cases
also provides basic cloud use cases for television and radio
broadcasters, movie studios, the games sub-industry, and
publishing. Those use cases that can be met by current IBM
offerings have been color-coded in dark-blue, those use cases
for which IBM offerings are imminent have been color-coded
in light-blue, and those use cases that IBM will include in
future offerings have been color-coded in white.

IBM’s goal is that our cloud offerings will be based on a
common cloud platform that provides a foundation for
value-added services, including but not limited to:
• A public cloud with multiple service “on-ramps” for clients,
hosted in key centers worldwide
• A common infrastructure to provide computing and
storage resources
• A common platform, business support services (BSS) and
operational support services (OSS) to operate and manage
the cloud implementation
• A full range of IBM and partner services
• The implementation and hosting services to build “private
clouds” for strategic outsourcing (SO) data centers and
other clients
IBM believes the following digital supply chain use cases
hold the greatest value for cloud computing in media and
entertainment in the immediate future:
• Digital archive—off-site content disaster recovery with
potential to evolve into B2B and B2C business models and
new revenue streams. IBM has a proven record of providing
digital archive as an outsourced and managed service.
• Production support—an extension of archive to support
on-going production processes. IBM designs WAN and
LAN infrastructures and works with partners to provide
cloud-based production support.
• Broadcast facility resiliency—content archived to provide
real-time broadcast failover in the event of a broadcast
facility outage.
• High-intensity processing—clouds equipped with special
high-intensity processing (grid computing) required to
expedite rendering, watermarking, transcoding and
encryption processing.
• Derivatives manufacturing—transcoding, encrypting, etc.,
and final packaging content for push or pull distribution.
IBM Sales and Distribution 17
• Business intelligence and analytics—a gaming cloud may
generate billions of transactions in a day. There is simply no
way to make sense of trends, purchasing patterns, and do
forecasting without business intelligence and analytics. IBM
has world-class capabilities in designing and implementing
BI-based digital supply chains.
• B2B monetization—integration of content distribution
processes with back-office and business intelligence processes.
Note that all of these use cases will depend heavily on the
development of an enterprise and, to the extent possible, a
standards-based, extra-enterprise metadata strategy. Without a
sound metadata strategy implemented as early in the digital
supply chain as possible, the less visible and useable digital
content may become.
IBM also envisions the following future use cases in media and
entertainment:
• Fully integrated B2B/B2C business models: Integration
with commerce, supply chain management (SCM),
enterprise resource management (ERP) and customer
relationship management (CRM) systems. IBM has a global
team of integration specialists who integrate enterprise,
legacy, and cloud-based systems using best practices in
SOA-based integration.
• Digital cinema end-to-end workflow support using cloud:
Centralized ad insertion, securing the production through
post-production workflow with Key Delivery Message
(KDM) management for dailies and distribution to theatres.
• Real-time streaming analytics (based on IBM System S):
Cloud-based capability of analyzing many inbound real-time
sources of audio, video, text and metadata to support real-
time business model adaptation and collaborative planning
forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) processes in digital
supply chain.
• Intelligent dissemination of content using push models and
smart content: Clouds maintain atomic content (pre-wrapped
with rights pointers) and associated metadata, as well as the
analytics to target consumers.
18 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

Table 2. Media and entertainment-specific use cases and deployment models

Use Cases Sub-Industry Sub Use Cases Deployment Model(s)

Digital Archive All On-site Digital Archive Private

Off-Site Content Disaster Recovery Private

Overflow All Storage Public, Private, Hybrid

Processing Private, Hybrid

B2B Monetization All Derivatives Manufacturing Private

B2B Distribution Private

Order Fulfillment Private

High Intensity Processing TV, Studios, Games Rendering Private, Hybrid

TV, Studios, Games Transcoding/MXFwrap/ MXFunwrap Private, Hybrid

TV, Studios, Games Watermarking Private

TV, Studios, Games Encryption Private

Publishers Text Analytics Private, Hybrid

Broadcast Facility Resiliency TV Real-time Analytics (System S) Private, Hybrid

BI/Analytics All SCM, CRM, ERP integrations Private, Hybrid

Streaming Analytics TV Private

Live Events Studios, Games Private, hybrid

Digital Cinema Studios KDM Management Private

Studios Digital Dailies Private

Text Analysis Publishers Private, Hybrid

Semantic Search Publishers Private, Hybrid

B2C Distribution All Private, Hybrid

Smart Content All Private, Hybrid

 IBM Sales and Distribution 19

Figure 5. Sub-use case off-site preservation of content

Media and entertainment-specific use cases and
their deployment models
Each use case has a likely deployment model or set of
deployment models based on the level of content protection,
security requirements and degree of processing required within
the deployment model (Table 2).
• Private clouds are better than public clouds when tight
controls are required.
• Public clouds are best when distributing massive amounts of
content to consumers over the Internet is required.
• Hybrid clouds are best when content aggregation,
management and distribution workflows need to be
contiguous to support the digital supply chain.
20 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

Digital archive can be deployed equally well as an on-site,
on-premises private cloud or as an off-site private cloud.
Storage overflow has been implemented with great success
using the public cloud model. Depending upon how custom or
sophisticated the processing requirements are, high-intensity
or high-performance processing can be performed in a private
or a public cloud. Generally, those content processes related to
content protection and usage tracking, such as encryption and
watermarking, respectively, are best performed in a private
cloud where strong governance and oversight are important.
Digital media archive sub-use cases
IBM recommends that media companies start with their
archives. Figures 5, 6, and 7 show an elaboration on this
use case in the form of three sub-use cases: (1) off-site
preservation, (2) off-site production support and (3) B2B
monetization of content.

Figure 6. Sub-use case off-site production support

 IBM Sales and Distribution 21

Figure 7. Sub-use case B2B Content Monetization

22 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry
Global evolution of media clouds
In a recent survey conducted by IBM and NHK, the national
broadcaster of Japan, it was revealed that each of the 12 media
companies are managing their assets and long-term archive
along a roadmap or continuum that is moving from enterprise
to private cloud to hybrid cloud (Figure 8). There is nothing
that precludes using all three cloud deployment models at
Figure 8. Evolution of media clouds
once, however, from what we
have observed in major media companies around the world,
the highest priorities are digitizing content and protecting it.
Note that each deployment model has its own business models,
benefits, assets, technical and business activities, and its own
set of key decisions.

Enterprise deployment model
• Business models:
–– On-site preservation of assets
–– On-site production support: Pre-production research,
search-browse-preview of archived content, and
repurposing of preserved content.
• Benefits:
–– Strong control of content and systems manipulating
content
–– Continuity of knowledge (institutional knowledge)
• Assets:
–– Content is likely to be both analog and digital in the
enterprise deployment model.
–– New content today is likely to arrive in digital formats
and be relatively easy to ingest.
–– Legacy, videotape-based content, may or may not be in
the process of being digitized.
–– Many digital asset management (DAM) vendors provide
archive-as-you-go capabilities, saving content to the
archive once the content has been ingested, once
finished shows have been approved to air, and while
content is actually being aired; in addition, these DAM
systems provide low resolution proxy generation and
logging and cataloging capabilities to generate and
enhance metadata.
• Business activities:
–– Creation of a baseline or balanced scorecard: Represents
the value of the enterprise model, associated costs,
including capital and operating expenses and benefits,
particularly with respect to production support (pre-
production research, repurposing, and so forth); degree
of security and content protection, which will help
provide the justification for making the transition to a
cloud deployment model.
–– The baseline information consists of workflow analysis,
content audit and activity-based cost analysis: What do
we have? How it is processed? And, how much does it
cost to create content products and metadata?
IBM Sales and Distribution 23
• Technical activities:
–– Digitize: New revenue models, particularly mone-
tization, are based on having digital content. Even
licensing models benefit from digital content since the
digital master can be used to produce many identical
copies for re-broadcast.
–– Encrypt: Within the enterprise, encryption may or may
not be used; in some cases content is encrypted since it
will be sent to external B2B consumers. (An example is
the AES 128-bit KDM encryption included in the digital
cinema initiative specification.)
–– Log/Catalog: Content cannot be located if there is no
metadata associated with it. Cataloging is the more
formal, information science activity associated with
preserving and archiving content.
• Critical decisions:
–– What seasonal and cyclical peaks and variability
should be taken into consideration? What are the
temporary bandwidth and storage requirements that
must be addressed that the current infrastructure
may not be able to handle?
–– What content are candidates for cloud storage?
–– What performance service level agreements (SLAs)
are required?
–– What security SLAs are required?
–– What content protection and/or encryption
are required?
–– What is the expected ROI or cost-benefit?
24 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

Private cloud: IBM’s focus

There are really two private cloud options: outsourcing and
insourcing. With outsourced, or external private, clouds are a
single-tenant cloud outsourced to a second party; internal
private clouds are those run by the same entity that uses them.
In the outsourced private cloud deployment model, the private
cloud may be operated inside a firm’s fire wall at its data center
or at the outsourcer’s facility.

IBM is focusing on providing and supporting the creation

of private clouds, as well as the transition from enterprise
computing models to an integrated enterprise-private cloud
model. From IBM’s perspective, an IBM or IBM-supplied
private cloud represents a more secure, stable, reliable,
predictable and controlled environment than the public cloud
environment. Gartner predicted last year that while public
clouds have generated most of the media attention, on this
emerging compute model most organizations will initially opt
to build private clouds internally. Costs can actually go up if
all a company wants to do is replace its current on-premises
operations with an exact replica in the cloud. (The interest in
the public cloud deployment model is being driven by a media
company’s ability to manage variable work loads over short
time periods without incurring additional capital expense.)

Figure 9. Private cloud


• Business models:
–– Off-site preservation/disaster recovery: Copies of digital
masters are stored off-site or in a separate physical
location from digital masters for business continuity.
–– Off-site production support: Off-site pre-production
research using search-browse of metadata, preview of
low resolution proxies of archived content, and
repurposing of (on-site or off-site) preserved content.
• Benefits
–– Strong protection of content and systems manipulating
content since this is a closed environment
–– Reduction of capital expenses/fixed costs, as well as some
operating costs
• Assets:
–– Off-site copies of digital assets: Bit-for-bit identical
copies of digital assets stored off-site, perhaps, originally
for disaster recovery and for B2B, and later for
generation of packaged digital derivatives for multi-
channel distribution.
–– Low resolution proxies: Low bitrate video proxies that
enable enterprise users, such as producers and editors,
and external users, such as B2B business partners, to
search the digital content inventory.
–– Metadata: Metadata must be associated with content
whether the content is on the enterprise premises or in
the cloud. Metadata repositories may be replicated
between enterprise and cloud deployment models.
• Business activities:
–– Cloud readiness assessment or private cloud business
case: Readiness means mapping out the business or
functional components of the enterprise, identifying
which components are candidates for the cloud based on
lowering storage costs and processing costs (few servers
required in the enterprise), as well as economies of scale,
in general. As mentioned before, cost savings are not
assured with cloud computing.
–– Risk assessment: Assess security, reliability and content
protection provided by the cloud.
IBM Sales and Distribution 25
• Technical activities:
–– Cloud technical readiness assessment: Does the
enterprise have the proper SOA stack to provide the
complex integration that is required?
–– Ingest-index: Technical and descriptive metadata need
to be associated with the content through wrappers
and/or in metadata repository.
–– Transcode: If low resolution proxies are not generated
by enterprise systems, they will need to be generated for
the private cloud. These proxies should be lower quality
than broadcast quality and optionally include visible
watermarks.
–– Inventory connectors/integration-as-a-service (make
or buy).
–– Storage assessment: Analysis for current and future
storage requirements by application and user access
location will provide a baseline of current storage costs,
limitations, and future requirements on which to
develop cloud architecture requirements.
• Critical decisions:
–– What content should be placed in the cloud?
–– What content cannot be placed in the cloud?
–– What metadata needs to be captured?
–– What latency and usage requirements drive
content location?
–– What are the anticipated communications costs to
connect to the private cloud?
–– What SLAs are required to support a private cloud?
26 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

Hybrid cloud (combined private and public cloud • Business models:

deployment models) –– Multi-channel distribution of content: Three-screen
distribution including licensing broadcast quality digital
content (from digital copies) and monetizing derivative
content (selected, segmented, transcoded, wrapped
content) for broadband and mobility
• Benefits:
–– Strong protection of content and systems manipulating
content since this is a closed environment
–– Reduction of capital expenses/fixed costs, as well as some
operating costs
–– Potential joint venture/shared revenue opportunity with
cloud provider
–– Potential to accelerate content distribution and market
share with only incremental costs (business intelligence
features, content processing to create, stage and
distribute to three screens)
–– Additional revenue stream from distribution of content
• Assets:
–– Digital copies for licensing rebroadcast (created during
“private cloud phase”)
–– Derivative content (“manufactured” content—formats
made to order)
–– Packaged digital goods metadata—metadata associated
with the derivative content (including but not limited to
technical metadata, rights and descriptive metadata)
• Business activities:
–– Distribution business case: Consumer demand
estimation. What are the competitive pressures? Is
exposing content to consumers at an accelerated rate
now considered to be an investment or has it reached
Figure 10. Hybrid cloud the stage where it might be considered the cost of doing
business? What are competitors doing? What should the
brand be? What pricing schemes should be applied?
–– Projected ROI: Identify revenue potential
–– Distribution pipeline: B2B partners
–– Rights management: Selection of digital rights
management (DRM), key hosting
–– E-commerce: Selection of clearinghouse

–– Integration strategy: Identification of candidate legacy
and other external systems for integration
–– Analytics/business intelligence: Necessary for
understanding actual consumer demand patterns and
developing a dynamic pricing strategy
• Technical activities:
–– Distribution formats: Required distribution
specifications, formats and DRMs
–– Identify required content processes
–– Packaged digital goods inventory connectors/
integration-as-a-service (make or buy)
–– Provide partner access to search-browse-preview
of content
–– Analytics/BI integration
–– Metadata transformation for export
–– Wrap/package content: Wrap content with metadata
and rights information
–– Analysis of volume variability, retrieval SLAs (latency
requirements, variability with age, other attributes),
on which to base private-hybrid-public cloud
applicability, storage tier architecture, and location
limitation requirements
• Critical decisions:
–– Selection of B2B partners/pipeline
–– Pricing strategy
–– DRMs: For inclusion in “manufacturing” and
“packaging” processing
Summary of media cloud evolution
As mentioned previously, despite the issues and challenges,
media companies continue to adopt clouds, and the cloud
provider business continues to grow and mature. Given the
risks—stolen content, lost revenue, reuse of content in
inappropriate ways and the potential impact on brand, the
growing consensus on the part of media companies is that
they must take a pragmatic, incremental approach. Here are
some general recommendations to help media companies
get started with cloud.
IBM Sales and Distribution 27
General recommendations
1. Enhance digital supply chain by starting with the archive.
Digital archive is a core IBM competency. IBM has,
perhaps, the longest history in the industry at designing,
implementing, and integrating digital archives. Digital
content and consumer demand are brought together
efficiently and effectively with a strong digital supply
chain strategy. A good place for media companies to start
using cloud storage and services is with their archives.
Media companies, which already store copies of their
content off-site for disaster recovery purposes, may
leverage additional revenue streams from stock footage
licensing and from the manufacture of digital derivatives
for multichannel distribution. IBM private clouds can
provide the reliability, security, and content protection
media companies expect.
2. Pilot cloud project
The best way to learn about the issues and benefits of
cloud is to use the technology. A pilot could be storing
non-mission-critical content or data in a public cloud. Some
have taken steps to use storage-as-a-service and platform-
as-a-service for overflow purposes. For example, The New
York Times used a public cloud during the 2008 presidential
election for traffic overflow. It doesn’t make sense to invest
in servers and storage that may never be used again.
3. Perform a security assessment.
Whether one builds one’s own private cloud, signs a
contract for managed services in a private cloud, or uses a
public cloud, one should assess system security using both
internal and external experts. IBM and other companies
offer security assessments that include content protection/
access/encryption/vulnerability analysis, general network
and application security.
28 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

4. Learn from other industries: Retail, education and healthcare.

Take advantage of the work done by the retail industry.
Supply chain management, logistics and risk management
processes created for manufacturing and retail can be applied
to digital goods and digital supply chain management.
Given declining advertising dollars and the downturn in
the economy, it is not unusual to hear terms like digital
supply chain management, derivative manufacturing, and
B2B order/fulfillment.
5. Identify the complex integration.
Not all integration work is created equally. Despite all the
claims around simple integration of commercial off-the-shelf
(COTS) software components and applications, expect to
perform some integration work. As one looks to integrate Figure 11. Strategic analysis and cloud deployment
with in-house legacy systems, especially those never designed
for integration, the complexity increases. Integration of the
production workflow and/or archive workflow with legacy
and backend business systems—titling, rights management, 7. Identify the optimal cloud deployment model.
ERP and CRM represent a higher level of complexity. Each media company is unique. Therefore, first understand
Another layer of complexity is the integration of third-party current costs, workflows volumes, IT architecture and
content manufacturing processes—transcoding, aspect ratio security. Develop a baseline understanding and plan a
conversion, up/down conversion, quality control and so transition along the continuum or evolutionary path
forth. IBM recommends that media companies follow an described above.
evolutionary path and not bite off too much at once.
6. Storage assessment and strategy
The value of cloud services will be based on IT application
and use requirements; volumes, including variability; and
latency requirements. An analysis of enterprise storage and
backup environments, coupled with a forecast of future
requirements, is critical. IBM recommends a storage assess-
ment to gain full insight into the best approaches for using
cloud technology to minimize TCO and meet enterprise
performance objectives and flexibility requirements.

IBM Global Business Service cloud “get
started” and “keep going” offerings
IBM has a set of Global Business Service offerings to support
media companies that are considering deploying and
optimizing cloud computing. A typical strategy and change
engagement might look like that in Figure 12.
Figure 12. Sample strategy engagement
IBM Sales and Distribution 29
Similarly, depending on where a media company identifies
itself on its own cloud roadmap, projects can be tailored to
meet each media company’s unique set of needs from a
menu of approaches and techniques. These approaches and
techniques can be mixed and matched to form a very targeted
engagement and executed using IBM’s proven methodology.
30 Cloud Computing for the Media and Entertainment Industry

Cloud computing resources

The following information will provide good reference
materials around cloud computing definitions, frameworks
and security.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

This website contains NIST’s definition of cloud computing

and other related guidance. This definition will serve as a
foundation for our upcoming publication on cloud models,
architectures and deployment strategies. Computer scientists at
NIST developed this draft definition in collaboration with
industry and government and we expect it to evolve over time
as the cloud industry and cloud technology matures.

NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/
cloud-def-v15.doc

Presentation on effectively and securely using the cloud

computing paradigm

European Network and Information Security Agency Figure 13. NIST Cloud Definition Framework
(ENISA)
http://www.enisa.europa.eu/

ENISA is working with Network and Information Security

for the EU and the Member States.

Cloud Use Case Group (associated with Open Cloud

Manifesto)
Read the Cloud Computing Use Cases Whitepaper

http://opencloudmanifesto.org/Cloud_Computing_Use_
Cases_Whitepaper-3_0.pdf

Figure 14. Open Cloud User Group Open Cloud Framework
IBM developerWorks® Cloud Computing
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/
An excellent resource for getting started in cloud computing
and connecting with the cloud computing community.
FIPS 140-2 Security Requirements for Cryptographic
Modules
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips140-2/fips1402.pdf
Digital Cinema Initiative, Key Delivery Message
(encryption)
http://www.dcimovies.com/reference/
IBM Sales and Distribution 31
John A. Hoehn, MS. MBA
Mr. Hoehn is currently working in the role of global SME in the Media and
Entertainment (M&E) industry. During his tenure at IBM, he has provided a
decade of experience in various business, management and technical
roles working with premier M&E clients. He is a doctoral candidate whose
dissertation topic is “How media companies make decisions to extend
digital supply chains using cloud computing”.
Contributors
• Peter H. Guglielmino, CTO, IBM Digital Media
• Richard D. Hennessy, Client IT Architect
• Jay Roston
• Janet Snowdon, M&E Business Development Executive
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010

IBM Corporation
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America

June 2010
All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, BladeCenter, developerWorks , iNotes,

LotusLive, System p, System Storage, and System x are trademarks or
registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in
the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM
trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information
with a trademark symbol (® or TM), these symbols indicate U.S. registered
or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was
published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law
trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available
on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/
copytrade.shtml.

Adobe, the Adobe logo, PostScript, and the PostScript logo are either
registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the
United States, and/or other countries.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other product, company or service names may be trademarks or service

marks of others.

Please Recycle

GIW03001-USEN-00