The deployment puzzle: Cloud vs. On-premise vs. Hybrid solutions

The decision to keep our company’s data, content and operations stored locally or in the cloud always leads to a search for balance between competing concerns: upfront investment in infrastructure vs. continuous payments, internal security vs. external security systems, maintenance of physical data storage and backups or not, etc.

What do we mean by deploying and having our solutions in the cloud? Simply, to rely on a network of external remote servers (data centers) to access the software and data or media files that we want on demand.

Therefore, this network of servers could not only host the traditional storage and archive solutions that usually come to mind when thinking about cloud deployments, but also all the operations of the entire media lifecycle if we wish to do so (from content scheduling to production, editing, transcoding, workflow orchestration, distribution or exchange of media files and even broadcasting and content publishing). In short, all the daily tasks of any broadcast and media company could be carried out by remotely accessing systems hosted in the cloud from a personal computer.

These cloud solutions are typically offered under a subscription-based or Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. Customers, sometimes called ‘tenants’, pay a fixed monthly or annual subscription, depending on the chosen plan or bundle, and they benefit from almost instant access to a tool through a simple web browser that does not require investing in any type of additional costs to work (such as hardware purchase, software updates or system maintenance plans). All these tasks are on the service provider’s roof.

From a financial standpoint, the possibility of making recurring payments also opens the door to new, more flexible business models for customers, based on OPEX (Operating Expenses) expenses that are usually incurred as part of the company’s daily operations to maintain its activity (similar to paying utility bills like electricity). Likewise, these recurring fixed expenses offer customers greater flexibility, as they are able to know the fixed payments that they will have to do on a monthly or annual basis in advance, as opposed to the acquisition of on-premise solutions that usually require larger and upfront one-time payments.

The main disadvantage that this type of cloud deployments usually have is the cost. Despite of being optimal to set up and start our operations quickly and with a minimal down payment or initial investment, in the long term it has been proven that some solutions can be much more cost-effective for customers in an on-premise format (considering, of course, that customers have enough computing capacity, equipment and IT resources to manage, maintain and update their facilities by themselves). Some of the processes that can increase the cost of cloud solutions drastically are, for example, live transcoding streams, storing a large volume of files or heavy files, system performance (the higher the performance requirements, the higher the cost) or the traffic of data and files to be exchanged and transferred (especially when they are not processed in the same location where they are stored).

In addition, depending on whether users opt for a public or private cloud service, other important considerations also arise, such as security, control and privacy over the content and processes stored.

Solutions installed locally or on-premise also offer interesting advantages. They are the traditional method in which broadcast and media systems have been installed and operated their tools for decades, and basically they allow companies to organize internally their assets, data, servers, equipment and software as they prefer.

This type of solution requires having servers or physical equipment in the company’s own facilities in order to store and deploy the software systems. As an alternative, they can also be outsourced by renting servers to an external data center for their exclusive use. In any case, choosing to set up our own infrastructure comes with a series of important added costs such as electricity, maintenance and security or protection of the equipment against potential cyber attacks. Likewise, this type of deployment will most likely require a simultaneous hardware and software update. simply because as the software evolves and is updated, more powerful equipment is usually required for the systems to run smoothly.

However, on-premise solutions are, without a doubt, the best alternative for those cases in which customers want to have greater control over their systems, a greater security and privacy of their data and stored content, or a redundant configuration in order to guarantee a fast disaster recovery in the event of system failure, crashes or exceptional circumstances. Likewise, they are the ideal solution when the tasks and processes to be carried out are CPU-intensive, with considerable bandwidth and storage consumption (a situation where the cost of deploying the same operation in the cloud would be much more expensive). Moreover, they offer full customization capacity, allowing customers to perfectly adapt the installation to their daily operations and specific needs.

Investing in this type of solution has certain financial particularities as well. Although in some cases the solution may be more cost-effective in the long term than deploying the same installation in the cloud, it will always require a higher initial investment to start with the operation, plus a series of extra expenses (hardware, software updates, support, maintenance, etc.) that in the case of subscription-based cloud services would be completely unnecessary. Therefore, depending on the needs of each customer, this may be a disadvantage or quite the opposite.

At this point, it is understandable to think that we have forgotten to mention the inability to work remotely with on-premise solutions. Is it truly impossible? The answer is no. In fact, for an on-premise solution to be accessed remotely, customers would simply need to ask the solution provider to send the list of ports to be opened by their IT department to connect remotely and then configure the routing accordingly. The benefit of working remotely with an on-premise solution is that customers can maintain a greater level of control over the nature of their operations and can choose their preferred network setup as well.

When it comes to hybrid solutions, many companies mistakenly think that these are just a form of transition before switching to a 100% cloud solution, although the reality could not be more different.

Hybrid solutions combine certain on-premise systems and equipment owned by the company with other solutions or outsourced services installed in a public or private cloud. They are a type of combined solution that is usually much more cost-effective and optimized from a control of costs standpoint, while they also guarantee better performance, control, scalability, availability of resources and seamless workflows than full cloud or on-premise solutions.

Hybrid solutions are usually a very interesting option for systems’ migrations (in order to minimize their impact on the channel’s daily operations), for facing sudden and regular changes in content demand or for those situations where the risk of changing one provider by another in the future needs to be reduced. That is, hybrid models offer great flexibility to customers and allow them avoid commitment to certain systems or services, either because the investment they made to acquire them was very high or because the migration from one cloud service to another is very complex and expensive.

Broadly speaking, the hybrid format combines the advantages offered by on-premise deployments in terms of security, privacy and operations control, with the benefits of scalability and easy access provided by cloud services. For example, broadcast and media companies might decide to store crucial data, high value-added content, or simply the highest resolution and heaviest video files on premise, so that they are not accessible from outside of the company’s facilities, as well as all those processes that are intensive in CPU and bandwidth consumption and that can lead to latency problems.

On the other hand, other less critical daily operations or low resolution workflows such as content delivery over IP, dynamic ad insertion, cognitive services, analytics on vast amounts of data or storing proxies or content needed for a playout server in the short term, could be hosted in the cloud to offer more flexibility to users and to better support specific peaks in content demand. This way, companies will only have to pay more for the extra use they make of these services during a certain period of time.

In conclusion, these types of hybrid deployments are a very good ally to keep costs under control and obtain the maximum performance and results from each work environment, adapting the infrastructure according to the needs of the company for each type of process, task or job area. The only critical point for the hybrid architecture to work properly is to ensure a robust and seamless integration between both environments.