Europeans visiting San Francisco in the summer are often prepared for cloudy weather but are instead greeted by a dense fog that often blurs their expected postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Similarly, a fog often appears when businesses embrace cloud-based service providers and expect an immediate one-stop solution for avoiding the red tape of procurement, racking servers, and acquiring IP addresses and namespaces. While moving your infrastructure to the cloud can solve many of these problems, and help minimize staffing, there is much to be considered before making such a transition.
Back in 1999 when Eric Mathewson approached me to join WideOrbit, cloud-based SaaS such as Salesforce had just started to roll out. At the time, Professor Ramnath Chellapa of Emory University's 1997 vision of Cloud Computing as the new computing paradigm, where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale, rather than technical limits alone, was not yet possible. This was mainly due to the high cost of hardware, bandwidth, and other limiting factors. What Salesforce and WideOrbit delivered in 1999 was closer to the massive hardware found in co-location facilities where we had servers in data centers, and we had virtualization, but still owned a large amount of pricey hardware.
2005 gave us Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and Amazon Machine Images. Microsoft Azure launched in 2009. Next came Google's Cloud Platform , App Engine in 2011 and then finally Google's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). But for most platforms, short of building new architecture to leverage things like dynamic load-balancing, containerization, microservices, and elasticity with Kubernetes, this was no better than what we had 10 years earlier with co-located facilities and virtualization. Leveraging the newest technology gave our engineering team a lot to work on, and we had come a long way since 2005, but we weren't close to optimized. Today, we are actively enhancing the platform to leverage these new technologies. In addition, as we help our clients support the digital convergence, we are finding more advantages to a central platform for the monetization of media. In the years of experience of streaming audio and video for both live and on-demand content, we have definitely seen the advantages of cloud events that can scale from thousands of viewers to millions with little notice.
So, what exactly do these public cloud vendors such as AWS, Azure, and GCP offer? For starters, they are located in Tier IV data centers with full redundancy of subsystems, compartmentalized security zones with biometric access controls, independently dual-powered cooling equipment, and fault-tolerant electrical power distribution. On top of that you may get additional protection in the form of geographically dispersed data centers.
While the cloud provides a lot of convenience and the ability to quickly scale, it can also result in data loss, data breaches, or worse. Many customers assume that simply by using a cloud service, backups and disaster recovery will be taken care of without any need for input. IT managers typically weigh the cost of hardware, centralized infrastructure, and its convenience with the cost of offerings from public cloud providers. But that is where things get difficult. As we all know, convenience and collaboration often lead to unintended security issues.
Bottom line, what most public cloud providers offer is part of an overall solution. You may get an operating system, but you're still responsible for patches. You may get the three nines of 99.9% availability, but that does not translate into availability of hosted services. You may get a database instance with redundancy, but you will need your own backups and encryption. You may get a firewall, a VPC and other security measures, but you will still need to monitor tripwires and protect against phishing and ransomware attacks. Automatic encryption between data centers will be provided, but a disaster recovery plan is still necessary.
In the end, the public cloud may be a small commodity portion of the offering, but your SaaS vendor needs to leverage it properly and work closely with your IT staff. At WideOrbit, we are constantly working with these same cloud providers to optimize our offering (this often means leveraging two vendors, which came in handy a few times when AWS had a global outage). Part of the offering is indeed a managed service , which takes care of optimization of middle and database tiers, clustering, application performance, and security. Cloud solutions still have to be configured by IT to include regular snapshots, backups, and disaster recovery for all tiers of service. This is potentially problematic for employers, especially if regulatory compliance is part of the picture. Unauthorized changes could make the company non-compliant and put the company at risk for fines and other penalties. The natural response of many employers is to tighten the reins, reassert control over employees, and become even more strict with IT policy.
So, whether you embrace all the good and bad of a cloud-computing infrastructure, or opt for a blend of both (WideOrbit often combines integrations between secure low-latency on-premise systems with local hyper-converged infrastructure, AWS, and Google Compute Cloud), remember the goal is always about lowering risk and improving the customer experience, while reducing IT overhead.
Eric Moe is our Chief Technology Officer. He has been by Eric Mathewson's side since 2001 and owns all hardware integration and advanced systems development. Prior to joining WideOrbit, Moe co-founded OpenTable.com and consulted for brands such as Silicon Graphics, Safeway and Kraft. Visit https://www.wideorbit.com/hostingservices/ to learn more about our managed hosting s
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/07/2026
Broadcast Management Group (BMG) has announced the appointment of Kathy Samuels ...
01/07/2026
Shade has announced Custom Objects and Automations, a platform expansion releasing June 29, 2026, that adds database and workflow automation capabilities direct...
01/07/2026
FOR-A America has announced the addition of Jaz Wray and Fernando Cruz to its U.S. sales team. Both report to Ernie Leon, Senior VP and Head of Sales and Strate...
01/07/2026
NBC Sports will air all 15 MLB games nationally on Sunday, July 5, across NBC, P...
01/07/2026
Clear-Com has announced a wireless communications upgrade for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, deploying FreeSpeak II and FreeSpeak Icon systems across both prod...
01/07/2026
England's performance team will use Sony's STATSports APEX GPS tracking system to monitor player physical data in real time during FIFA World Cup 2026 m...
01/07/2026
Adder Technology has announced the appointment of Neil Hillier as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2026. Hillier succeeds Adrian Dickens, who transiti...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. has announced a strategic transaction creating two separate companies. The Production and Playout business will continue as Bitcentral, now own...
01/07/2026
DAZN has announced results from DAZN48, its creator initiative for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Launched in April 2026, the program received thousands of applicatio...
01/07/2026
Sarah Rose, VP, global services, Daktronics (NASDAQ: DAKT), will be inducted into the Information Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) Hall of Fame at t...
01/07/2026
Gravity Media and the World Economic Forum's production team provided broadc...
01/07/2026
Insight Productions has announced the launch of Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit built for esports production. The truck is built around a Ross Vi...
01/07/2026
ESPN has announced several content initiatives marking America's 250th anniversary, as part of The Walt Disney Company's Disney Celebrates America pro...
01/07/2026
Eleven production kits, REMI workflows, and cloud distribution bring 40 World Cu...
01/07/2026
The conference also discussed the opportunities offered an industry that is endu...
01/07/2026
The Mountain West Conference has announced the launch of MW , a direct-to-consumer streaming platform powered by Kiswe. The platform will carry live Mountain We...
01/07/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
01/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
01/07/2026
Exclusive run of limited-edition modelling pedals
Sweetwater and Andertons M...
01/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is pleased to announce that the ca...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camera bag collection for modern h...
01/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition
Brie Clayton July 1, 2026
0 Comments
Volunteers use ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Desig...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...
01/07/2026
LONDON, UK, 1 JULY Jigsaw24 has appointed Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media and Entertainment, reinforcing its continued investment in helping broadcaster...
01/07/2026
Content Vault, the patent-pending secure content distribution platform protecting high-value media from disclosures, theft and unauthorised access, today announ...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. a leading provider of enterprise software and digital media solutions for news, sports and entertainment broadcasters, as well as streaming pla...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through nation...
01/07/2026
Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Expe...
01/07/2026
Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersiv...
01/07/2026
Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinit...
01/07/2026
UKTV has today announced the appointment of Matt Berry to the newly created role of General Manager - Marketing, effective 1 July.
Matt will take on this senio...
01/07/2026
Sky Zero Footprint Fund-backed TV campaign featuring Deborah Meaden challenges consumers to rethink everyday bathroom wasteWednesday 1 July 2026
Fussy asks Bri...
01/07/2026
Constituency-level analysis reveals where girls miss out most on sport - and where targeted action could unlock more than £640 million in economic and health be...
01/07/2026
Wuppertal July 1, 2026
Riedel and SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration With SimplyLive IntegrationRiedel Communications today announced an expanded collaboration wit...
01/07/2026
Apple today introduced power-packed updates to Apple Creator Studio, a groundbre...
Europeans visiting San Francisco in the summer are often prepared for cloudy weather but are instead greeted by a dense fog that often blurs their expected postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Similarly, a fog often appears when businesses embrace cloud-based service providers and expect an immediate one-stop solution for avoiding the red tape of procurement, racking servers, and acquiring IP addresses and namespaces. While moving your infrastructure to the cloud can solve many of these problems, and help minimize staffing, there is much to be considered before making such a transition. 
