By Juan Martin
When your OTT service is truly cloud native, anything is possible.
That was the essence of my conversation with Simon Applebaum on “Tomorrow Will Be Televised” late last month.
Simon and I talked about low-latency streaming. We talked about the power of 5G. We talked about immersive viewing experiences. And more.
We packed a lot into 30 minutes, but to me it came down to one thing: For the OTT industry truly to capitalize on the opportunities created by technology, it needs to go all-in on the cloud. That means migrating from earlier generations of OTT infrastructure to a Gen5 architecture that is fully cloud-based.
Here’s why: OTT is changing at the speed of innovation. When you’re one of hundreds of services competing for audience attention, you need to be able to capitalize quickly on features that improve engagement and monetization. Legacy architectures simply aren’t fast enough.
Cloud native architectures uniquely enable the performance and agility that OTT providers need to achieve market success today and future-proof against evolutionary shifts. In addition to scaling to meet increased demand or pivoting to deploy new features, providers can break through to new areas. For example:
- Low latency is the final frontier that separates OTT from broadcast. The ability to significantly reduce latency opens the door to real-time betting – most notably in sports – and adds a layer of engagement to telecasts. It also improves cloud-based gaming, so a global audience can access the online arena without an intermediate console.
- Increased availability of 5G will allow the industry to push more content and more processing to the edge of the network, creating the opportunity for 3D-type applications as well as enriched in-stadium experiences that can bring live and remote fans closer to the action.
- Immersive video environments can give the viewer the opportunity to switch among multiple camera angles or move around the virtual space. The ability to focus on a particular player or performer, or to see an event from another perspective can add an entirely new layer to video engagement.
You can listen to my entire conversation with Simon here. It’s an interesting glimpse into the future of television, but don’t forget one thing:
It takes a cloud-native architecture to make it real.
