How the Cloud Has Affected the Media & Entertainment Industry

Cloud computing and AI have changed the media and entertainment industry forever. High-quality content generation is widely accessible, and distributing this content has never been easier. Modern technology has leveled the playing field between large enterprises and upstarts, unlocked new opportunities, and intensified competition.

With these changes, consumers expect more from media and entertainment companies. It’s not enough to have great content alone. You must now distribute it with minimal latency and create intuitive end-user experiences on many platforms and devices. Organizations also have to be ready to handle sudden surges or drops in usage without any downtime. All of this has to happen while continuing to invest in new IP, keeping up with market trends, and delivering on consumer preferences.

The good news is the technology that IT teams need to meet all these mandates already exists and is only going to get better. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a wide range of services that media and entertainment companies can use to solve key pain points and create value for their customers. And after re:Invent 2024, it’s clear things are only getting more exciting.

How AWS Empowers Media & Entertainment Businesses

One of the biggest benefits of the cloud in the media and entertainment industry is how it enables global content delivery. Companies can now serve content to users worldwide in multiple formats. Live streaming, on-demand video, interactive video, cloud gaming – are all examples of the types of content that reach users at scale from AWS infrastructure, rather than on-premises servers.

Services like Amazon CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator give companies virtually unlimited options regarding handling and serving user traffic. Companies can cache their apps, websites, videos, and more from edge locations and let AWS figure out the fastest way to deliver content. Cybersecurity teams can also implement services like AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to guard against DDoS and application attacks as cloud infrastructure scales. Put simply, organizations can go directly to the consumer – fast – without compromising security.

Furthermore, scaling with demand is much easier than it used to be. Rather than having to provision new hardware on-prem, AWS users can deploy compute on-demand manually or let AWS infrastructure scale automatically. By aligning compute with actual content consumption, companies avoid over or under-provisioning resources, improving cost-efficiency and user experiences.

Data-Driven

The cloud also unlocks a new level of data-driven decision-making. Media and entertainment companies can collect, store, and process billions of data points about how their users engage with content. With all this information, it’s possible to create personalized recommendation engines and deliver the perfect advertisement to the right audience at the right time. Consumers no longer have to settle for the content that everyone else gets. They can enjoy tailor-made experiences and even help improve the algorithms that decide the content they see simply by interacting with platforms.

Companies with sophisticated data engineering and data science practices can also harness all this information to innovate and help creative directors decide what to invest in next. In other words, media and entertainment companies that know how to handle data can decrease their risk significantly.

AI-Generated Content

The next wave of innovation in the media and entertainment space will come from AI-generated content. Services like Amazon Nova are accelerating the content generation process and giving non-technical users the ability to go from idea to reality faster than ever. Organizations will be able to adapt to industry trends faster, collaborate with other content creators across the globe, and leverage AI – all at a much lower cost.

The possibilities are virtually endless for those on the cloud. It’s an incredible time to work in the media and entertainment space. Yet, all the AI and cloud computing innovations can be overwhelming. There’s no one right IT strategy or roadmap. This is where working with an AWS Premier Tier Services partner like ClearScale can help.

Transform Your Media and Entertainment Business with ClearScale and AWS

ClearScale has been working with cloud computing in the media and entertainment industry since 2011. We’ve partnered with a wide range of businesses, from gaming studios to large-scale content delivery networks. Whatever the use case or vision of the client’s leadership team, AWS has the capabilities and services needed to bring innovation to fruition.

For instance, we worked with one of the world’s largest anime-themed web communities to improve the stability and uptime of its platform. The organization had 25 million registered users and struggled to handle unpredictable and volatile traffic with infrastructure hosted in an on-premises data center. We helped the client migrate to the cloud, implement auto-scaling groups, a faster app development process, and a robust data and secrets management system. With these changes, the gaming community now has a more durable, scalable, and secure platform for its millions of users across the globe.

We also helped one of Canada’s largest newspapers build a new mobile application with a personalized recommendation engine. Our solutions architects and cloud engineers implemented several big data and machine learning services on AWS that now enable the platform to provide personalized recommendations to users. Plus, those users can now consume high-value content directly on their mobile devices.

These are just a few examples of how we partner with media and entertainment companies. Schedule a consultation to learn more about what’s possible on AWS and how ClearScale could help you achieve your IT goals.