
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
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
09/07/2025
WASHINGTON The NAB Leadership Foundation (NABLF) has announced the graduation of the 2025 Broadcast Leadership Training (BLT) class. The classs successful compl...
09/07/2025
Faced with rising costs, the proliferation digital services and the difficulty of managing many different subscriptions, two-thirds (66%) of consumers say they ...
09/07/2025
Daniel S. McCoy, a Production Sound Mixer and Sound Consultant for cinema, commercial and live events, has utilized DPA Microphones for over 25 years. In the ea...
09/07/2025
- A Celebration of Optical Excellence Uniting the Lens World's Leading Optical Minds -
CVP, one of Europe's leading resellers and providers of profe...
08/07/2025
In an era where digital threats to journalists are becoming increasingly aggressive and widespread, MediaSafe Africa launches as a vital online resource to help...
08/07/2025
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a fro...
08/07/2025
This summer, as the energy builds for one of the biggest moments in women's ...
08/07/2025
SBS strengthens commitment to inclusion with new commissioning guidelines
8 July, 2025
Media releases
SBS has launched new Commissioning Inclusion Guidelin...
08/07/2025
Secrets, Spies and Sabotage: 40 years on, SBS podcast investigates historic bomb...
08/07/2025
ATLANTA and CINCINNATI Gray Media and The E.W. Scripps Co. have agreed to swap television stations across five midsized and small markets, resulting in the crea...
08/07/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has announced new software updates to its Arcadia Central Station that enable connectivity across Clear-Com products as well as third-...
08/07/2025
PRINCETON, N.J. Triveni Digital has launched its NextGen TV Innovation Partnership Program, an initiative to support public broadcasters in their transition to ...
08/07/2025
WASHINGTON In response to a request by LPTV broadcaster HC2 that the Federal Communications Commission allow its stations to become datacasters using 5G broadca...
08/07/2025
As TV broadcasters shift from wary tire-kicking to increasingly enthusiastic adoption of AI technology, new ways of doing things are taking hold at lightning sp...
08/07/2025
Content personalization has been a hot topic ever since the emergence of niche cable networks and the VCR in the 1980s allowed consumers to access content geare...
08/07/2025
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and monetization at scale, announces that major French media group RMC BFM has selected Broadpeak's server-side ad insertio...
08/07/2025
MBS, a leading service integrator and managed gateway operator, has announced an agreement with SES to acquire a part of its media services in Germany and the U...
08/07/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is applauding the passage of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill and provision...
08/07/2025
SYDNEY RTS has announced that Channel 7 Sydney has deployed a new comms system from the intercom vendor as part of a larger ST-2110 upgrade....
08/07/2025
ATLANTA & CINCINNATI Gray Media, Inc. and The E.W. Scripps Company have entered into agreements to swap television stations across five mid-sized and small mark...
08/07/2025
UKTV today announces that Richard Watsham, Chief Creative Officer at UKTV and Global Director of Acquisitions for BBC Studios/UKTV, has decided to step down fro...
08/07/2025
Groundbreaking Gamecocks: Inside University of South Carolina's Four-Control...
08/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment's Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN...
08/07/2025
Live From 2025 FIFA Club World Cup: FIFA, HBS Focus on Tournament Wrap, With an ...
08/07/2025
SVG Rewind: NESN Goes Behind the Scenes of 1975 Red Sox Retro Broadcast NESN is following up the retrocast with a week-long celebration of the Green Monster By...
08/07/2025
Back to All News
The Monster of Florence: The Four-Episode TV Series Directed b...
08/07/2025
Back to All News
Shooting of 53 Sundays, Cesc Gays New Project, Is Finished
Entertainment
08 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Download the f...
08/07/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. - July 8, 2025 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced a reco...
08/07/2025
Arvato Systems Optimizes Customer Communication with AOK Niedersachsen
New project in the statutory health insurance sector
Arvato Systems and AOK Niedersach...
08/07/2025
On August 7, Apple Arcade is adding four exclusive games to its diverse catalogue of more than 200 fun games for players to enjoy, all free from ads and in-app ...
08/07/2025
Modern AI applications increasingly rely on models that combine huge parameter c...
07/07/2025
SBS Farewells Chair George Savvides AM
7 July, 2025
Media releases
Born of Greek Cypriot parents, Mr Savvides joined the SBS Board as Deputy Chair in Febru...
07/07/2025
Advanced vision solutions deliver more than reliable night vision for tactical-edge warfighters. Today's technological advances can provide the capability f...
07/07/2025
BALTIMORE Sinclair has named Narinder Sahai its executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective immediately....
07/07/2025
Riedel Communications today announced the launch of RefSuite, a powerful new Managed Technology solution tailored to professional sports workflows. RefSuite com...
07/07/2025
Regional base will foster client engagement, partner collaboration, and executive touchpoints
Skandha Media Services, a leading provider of cloud-native media ...
07/07/2025
Advanced Systems Group, LLC (ASG), a technology and services provider for media creatives and content owners, announced its Against All Odds - ASG Builds Cutti...
07/07/2025
Agreement secured on the strength of Skandha's proven track record in delivering reliable managed services across the full content life cycle for existing h...
07/07/2025
** MEDIA ALERT **
VIZ Media Ignites AX 2025 with Star-Studded Panels, Exclus...
07/07/2025
Back to All News
The Long-Awaited Trailer is Here: Alice in Borderland' Se...
07/07/2025
Back to All News
Anime for Every Fan: Fueling a New Era of Global Storytelling
Entertainment
07 July 2025
GlobalUnited StatesJapan
Link copied to clipboard...
07/07/2025
1-2 Punch: The Cloud, Generative AI, and the Future of Sports-Content Distributi...
07/07/2025
Tests and decisions: Formula E host broadcaster Aurora on launching new AR graph...
07/07/2025
Building tension: Using new AR graphics for storytelling at the Formula E penult...
07/07/2025
Altitude Sports' Matt Krol on the Success of the RSN's In-Arena Postgame...
07/07/2025
SVG Rewind: Four NFL Clubs Bring Us on Set of Respective Media Day Shoots An in-depth conversation with 49ers Laura Johnson, Ravens Jay O'Brien, Las Vegas R...
07/07/2025
Cosm To Build Fifth Shared Reality Venue in Cleveland as Part of Bedrock's ...