OREANDA-NEWS. November 23, 2015. Our last blog article, “Next Generation Digital Media Networks,” discussed escalating rates of digital media production, distribution and consumption and how media companies are addressing the market’s growing demand with interconnection strategies. In this article, we’ll focus on how media companies can leverage the building blocks of an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™ to handle the increasing amount of digital media content and develop more efficient workflows and revenue streams.

The diagram below illustrates the essential building blogs of an Interconnection Oriented Architecture:

Here is how these building blocks and greater interconnectivity can empower media companies to optimize their digital media production, delivery and consumption and speed new videos to the market for faster monetization.

Data Hub New file formats are only one factor driving the deluge of data that media companies face.

  • Digital camera technology allows content creators to produce more digital media content in much shorter periods of time.
  • Media company storage needs are estimated to increase six-fold by 2018.
  • Active archiving will drive the need for additional hard drive storage space to supplement the movement away from linear tape and support long-term archiving. A large amount of unstructured metadata accompanies this content and needs to be captured, organized and analyzed for insights.

Equinix has more than 100 data centers in key metro areas, all connected via high speed wide area network (WAN) interconnection, making them ideal locations to establish data hubs. These hubs can support large data files from globally dispersed production shoot locations.

Ecosystem and Exchange

As data sets grow, it becomes more time-consuming and difficult to move data across WAN links to business partners for processing and content distribution. The use of the Internet for data transfer raises additional security concerns and loss of routing control.

Direct, secure interconnection via colocation removes bandwidth constraints, is highly scalable, and allows security policy to be applied at the network edge. It also streamlines content distribution to a broader audience, retaining current customer loyalty and attracting new customers. Equinix Internet Exchange points see 90% of North America’s Internet traffic and provide direct access to over 500 content delivery platforms worldwide. This results in low-latency, high-performance delivery, partnerships across market segments and improved quality of experience for viewers.

Leveraging business ecosystems within Equinix also opens new partnerships across market segments, such as online advertising services via the Equinix Advertising Exchange, and improves delivery performance and generates new revenue opportunities. 

Communications Hubs

Creative collaboration is a key component across theatrical and television productions, often involving multiple geographical locations, artists and vendors. As media files are kept closer to the edge to limit file movements, postproduction tools will also migrate into the data center. This movement will require low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnection solutions to maintain response times and facilitate remote work via protocols like PCoIP, which compress and decompress images and sound. This enables production partners to streamline their processes and produce final media content much faster, speeding time to market.

Additionally, cloud service providers (CSPs) will continue to move up the service stack and take on highly technical and compute-intensive processes such as visual effects rendering, further pushing production tools out of local facilities and to the network edge.

To maintain stringent security standards around cloud interconnection and tight control over production data, hybrid cloud deployments using direct private connection to CSPs will deliver an optimized mix of low-latency performance and security. Equinix offers secure interconnection to leading cloud providers via its Cloud Exchange – including  Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Office 365, Google Cloud Platform, SoftLayer, and Oracle Cloud.– while allowing the enterprise to maintain control of the cloud edge security policy and routing to deliver robust cloud services.