Cloud and how it can help address streaming’s ‘high carbon footprint’

What are the main challenges facing those tasked with creating and delivering content?

Sustainability: Streaming is now the de-facto standard for watching live or VOD content, but this comes at the cost of a high carbon footprint. This is of paramount importance given the rise of streaming throughout the world, and no-one can in this industry can afford to ignore it.

Flexibility: Content providers need to deliver more content in less time to attract and retain their audiences. This often requires a complete rework of their delivery workflow – from the playout to the user device itself.

Cost. The cloud is still seen as expensive and requires new skills to be able to accurately predict the costs of using it. This prevents a massive adoption of the latest cloud technologies, [although] both challenges described above can be solved using the cloud: the major cloud providers are committed and acting to reduce their carbon footprint (by using renewable energy for instance) and the cloud is, of course, a perfect fit for flexibility.

How is your company helping content owners and creators to overcome their challenges?

Quortex I/O is a cloud-native platform giving content owners complete control over the resources and bandwidth needed to conduct live-streams and launch new online services. This new software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution lets users meet demand for content easily and quickly by delivering pop-up or 24/7 online channels that can reach millions of people globally.

Based on the company’s ‘Just-In-Time-Everything’ technology, Quortex I/O maximises the benefits of live streaming while minimising the risks associated with online event launches to near-zero. On top of that, we can make use of cloud providers’ unused capacity and the infrastructure will scale so that we never waste a single kWh of cloud capacity.

What impact has Coronavirus had on the media and entertainment industry?

This pandemic was an accelerator for many different trends. Staying at home increased the overall streaming consumption, while video-conferencing tools and video as a whole have never been so predominant in human interactions. But the pandemic also accelerated the trend to use SaaS solutions, [including] because SaaS usually comes without any commitment and is typically a very good fit to launch new services without risks in these highly uncertain times. But it’s also because SaaS can be operated from anywhere in the world without having to plug cables or install servers. What was seen as a “nice to have” before the pandemic has become the new industry standard.

• Marc Baillavoine is the CEO of Quortex