More than fifty participants attended this week's EBU workshop on the use of cloud technologies by broadcasters. Titled Out of the Cloud, into the light?, the workshop was designed to demystify the topic and cut through some of the hype surrounding it.

The opening session tried to separate some of the myths from the reality. While keynote speaker Al Kovalick said that broadcasters could already start to migrate some of the "low hanging fruit", a few EBU Members raised key questions where answers aren't always easy to find: who controls the data? Who can access the data? How can you realiably compare the costs of cloud vs. non-cloud soluations? In any case, Hitachi's Harry Zimmer (pictured below) was clear about one thing: get legal advice! He strongly recommended involving in-house lawyers before entering into any contracts with cloud providers.

Things got interactive after lunch, as the participants worked together to answer the questions "what is really possible and what are the obstacles?" Asked to draw up a kind of wishlist for the broadcasters' perfect cloud service, the outcome described a multi-vendor cloud ecosystem based on the procurement of best-of-breed services. Such an ecosystem would have common architectural principles; a standards-based approach;  and service-oriented architectures. It would also need to use new approaches to deal with the data deluge,  to overcome problems with data lock-in and to minimize network overheads. A tall order perhaps!

The final session tried to address how much of this wishlist can actually be delivered and, crucially, when? Following presentations on some of the key technology elements, a discussion panel set about building a roadmap to the cloud for broadcasters. Panellists and delegates highlighted some of the quick wins, such as back-up and recovery, dropbox-style Contribution systems, and transcoding for delivery to web platforms. But there was lively debate around the extent to which the public Cloud can be used, if at all, for high quality transcoding, critical QC, digital archives (public or otherwise), and anything that involves sensitive private data.

The materials presented at the Cloud Workshop are available to EBU Members (and non-members who attended the event). A user acount on the EBU Technology & Innovation website is required. Click here.

Photo: Harry Zimmer of Hitachi Data Systems, speaking at Out of the Cloud, into the light?