Cloud Broadcast Revolution: Is the Industry Ready for a Cloud-First Future? | By The Digital Insider

At IBC2025, Roberto Musso hosted NDI Connected Talks, exploring one of today’s biggest questions in broadcast technology:

Is cloud-based broadcasting ready to become the new industry standard?

Experts from Ross Video, Comprimato, AWS, and Vizrt shared insights on how cloud workflows are transforming live production—covering opportunities, challenges, and real-world adoption strategies.

Watch the full session to learn how the future of broadcast is being built in the cloud:

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Read the full transcript:

the NDI booth, the ecosystem booth at IBC and I'm very pleased to have this panel with these friends. Uh I'm Roberto Muso, technical director at NDI and known as Dr. Ndi. So we are talking about cloud and we will have a very interesting session. uh introduction. So over the last decade we have seen cloud uh reshape almost every part of media from storage distribution to editing and collaboration. But in live broadcast the adoption has been a little bit slow. Uh the reason was you know the perception about reliability, latency uh interoperability and all those factor continue to spark debate about cloud usage and and adoption. And so today we want to ask the big question. Is the cloud finally ready to become the standard for broadcast production or it will remain complimementaryary tool alongside on premise infrastructure. And so to explore this we have uh good friends uh three four leading voice Norasan uh worldwide partner solution architect media and entertainment at AWS uh the company that more than any other are defined the cloud infrastructure what the cloud infrastructure means at scale. We have Steve Taylor, chief product and technology officer of Vizart. Vizarti is a pioneer of softwaredefined production enabling live workflow to move into the cloud with creativity and flexibility. We have Jiri Matella, co at Compreato, which is a specialist in video processing and compression, helping solve the very real challenge of efficiency, bandwidth and quality in cloud workflow. And then we have Aaron Tunnel, business development director for cloud solution at Ross video. Ross uh is a global leader in cloud production technology uh known for his broad portfolio spanning graphic automation production system. Ross has been increasingly focused on hybrid and cloud native native solution that help broadcaster transition exist uh the existing workflow into flexible scalable cloud environments. So together we will look at the opportunities the challenges and the particular steps needed for broadcaster to fully embrace the cloud. So the first question is for all the panelists. Uh so cloud workflow has been discussed for over a decade but adoption has been uneven. What do you see as the biggest barrier still holding back cloud-based broadcast from the becoming the default standard? So I am not for mic so I ask you to help me and share the mic is already on. I can go first. Um I think the the technologies that work in remote production. We have many many tools that makes remote production possible today. uh I think uh especially when it comes to uh quality is also very technical to put up virtual production but I think the biggest struggle is in kind of like engineering knowledge because all of a sudden something about the video that has been around for knowledge and other for years all of a sudden so I security devops and a whole bunch of other areas where the video [Music] is my mind for bigger adoption of the virtualization. Sure. Um I can go next. I agree with you on the knowledge side of things. I would say look at it from a consideration standpoint. So when cloud workloads for broadcast started, it started mainly with uh playup as the main workflow and with that came a set of considerations. Example, how do you contribute content to the cloud or how do you enable multi-reion resilience? As the workflows be are becoming more intricate, our customers are want to create content, they want to connect systems together, they want to um enable personalized experiences and so on. the considerations are also evolving and so looking at things like you know the knowledge base is one of them but interoperability is a key aspect as well. How do we accelerate interoperability to reduce the time to market for customers uh and have solutions that they can trust and benefit from. Uh also uh leaning in on the superpowers of partners and accelerating uh applications that are maybe API first or coming back to that DevOps lens as well. Right? So these are some of the areas and and and I think licensing is is another consideration as well. You know, how do you look at licensing especially in hybrid work? Well, I could just say I agree with all that because I do. Um I think there's an element of uh just lack of awareness or experiential trust this new technology. If we look at the transition from SDI to IP over AB over IP, this is the next step of that. And so just getting that awareness, the the knowledge that the thought that you need to know how to set up virtual private things in the cloud and blah blah blah is the challenge and we need to make it as simple as possible. So the onboarding, the offboarding, the support of protocols, things like NDI supporting media central is an amazing sort of adoption factor to allow people to not even have to think about this. And that's what we need to do. We need to stop talking about cloud. It just needs to be there and then we're talking about what we're doing in the cloud because that's the real value that we we're all striving towards. Of course, I agree with everybody here. I was going to say skills gap, right? I uh I joined AWS uh 10 years ago and and it's not just a skills gap of the ven diagram of cloud engineers and broadcast engineers and where that overlaps is was small then it's still small today. We have to make it easier. Um I like what you know Steve just said around you know cloud is really a distribution method. The technology is ideally the same and transparent to the end user. So I think it comes down to we need to make it easier easier for things like licensing like Nor mentioned easier for signal discovery um easier to deploy from that perspective and then we'll get uh more adoption from that from that side of it and it's not just on the hyperscalers you know many of us here on this panel are from the vendor side as well and so that's part of the journey that that we need to take along with customers is is part of that. Yeah. So the next question is for no. Uh so as one of the main driving force and many of us will say the driving force behind the democratization of cloud service. Have how have you seen the role of the cloud in broadcast evolve over time and what are the biggest difference between uh when this journey began and when we are today and where we are today I would say cloud is an enabler right and and I think that's something that Erin alluded to we want to think of the cloud as a as a vessel right to achieve achieve um excellent business outcomes for our customers. So as AWS and our partners, we are customer obsessed in helping them get there and we see that in how the workflows are evolving in the cloud. So if you combine the superpowers of partners right whether it is obviously you know NDI and confirmato anderti and Ross and others each one of our partners has superpowers combine that with breath and depth uh services in the cloud that are not only horizontal but are purpose-built for media and entertainment. So services for media and entertainment solution for media and entertainment plus I would say the experience of AWS teams for over 18 years in in in the space. If you look at our general manager for media entertainment games and sports Samira Baptier she came from Cisco and she was working on the broadcast. Thomas Edwards is a semantic fellow and is also ex Fox. I came from a vendor as well, right? And so it's a combination of these things that are accelerating uh the the workflow and the vision of our customer. Great. Thank you. So uh question for Steve. Uh V3 has been enabling software defined production for years. How do you see cloud workflow changing the role of live production teams for example and are we moving toward a model where creative talent can be fully distributed worldwide and not being in the same place. Yeah, I think I think there's two angles on this. Let's talk to that one. Absolutely. People can now produce a show from anywhere at any time. We did a great uh thing on the beach about two years ago on California and got all these technical directors in and showed all our products and then realized that actually they weren't in the same room as the products and that understanding that I don't need to be here and get on a plane. It is a great thing obviously it's a great thing for health, social mobility and flexibility but also just that ability also to have the people in one place but all of the equipment does not need to be shipped out to the ground. So that's also, you know, no more truck bowls, no more heavy equipment, obviously still the cameras there. So there's a lot of flexibility either way. Um, and I think that's what we we like. We're actually changing the the workload, the way people are engaging with the technology and not just technology at the same time. And then of course you once we get to the cloud then we've got all these other capabilities of AI enhanced workflows and pulling things together and automation and agentic reduces and everything and that also changes that workflow as well which is amazing. So the next question is for Jerry. Uh low latency video processing and efficient codeex are crucial for cloud production. How sorry. So how is compreato tackling the balance between quality bandwidth and computer resource in cloud environment? Right. Um then uh while the software gives you a lot of flexibility in how things but also uh the brings uh a lot of options and those options cloud has unlimited computing power in real environment because you pay for the power. So uh uh I need to rely on special design accelerators for the media processing. So what you need to do is uh you can optimize you know future views formats for both your images and also uh producing and uh I think that uh uh when it comes to cloud specifically like how to do video within the cloud uh I mean NDI has been pretty awesome combination of format but I would also say uh or what I like about NDI is user friendly like super simple design so there's no uh you know specific you know requirements for things and that's I think what uh we need in those type of environments like and uh so Cool. Thank you. So the next question is for Arrow. So Ross has traditionally been known for robust on premise solution in live production. How are you approaching the transition to cloud while still supporting broadcaster that need hybrid model? First question and how is Ross helping production team uh to reduce the complexity and maintain the reliability when shifting to virtualiz workflow. Yeah, I think if you look at um you the whole panel is about broadcast adoption in cloud and I think that we have to kind of take a more nuanced approach to that. I think I came to AWS 10 years ago to bring broadcast playout to the cloud. I think broadcast playout is very mature in the cloud as is broadcast distribution but live production in the cloud is still a journey. I know that you know Steve and and Vizart are on this journey as well in particular. Um I think we've gotten to a point where you know we're we're all customer driven at the end of the day. We're listening to what customers want. And so I don't think it's a conversation as much anymore about whether or not it's technically possible to do it. It's really working back from the customer's you know business challenges. Um and a lot of that can be you know how do we license right for this. So the Ross approach has been you know we do have some customers who are you know air quotes all in on cloud but predominantly most of our customers want to be able to burst it in the cloud for for special events. Um as as Steve mentioned rolling trucks is expensive. I think cloud allows for things like um DR protection for individual local stations that really was never you know fiscally possible before from that perspective. Um, and so I think that that's the journey that we're taking with our customers is kind of, you know, chasing what customers are asking for. One of the big use cases today, uh, that we're seeing is is first of all graphics in the cloud. You know, being able to either add more graphics, um, on demand or add graphics to a lot of tier 2, tier three content, particularly sports content that you couldn't afford to, you know, buy $50,000 graphics package for. Um, how is Ross making it easier? Um, you know, we've been making investments over the last couple years. Really ramped up our cloud team. I'm proof of that, right? Uh, and then, um, you know, we've got a a technology demonstration you can come by and take a look at. It's an orchestrator we call CPS, a cloud provisioning system, drag and drop, um, capability of orchestrating predominantly Ross, but we're working on third parties as well. And, you know, kind of coming full circle back to the first question of the day, which is, you know, what's the barrier to entry? the barrier interest entry is still I think a skills gap and the complexity of it you know we're not alone in this but I think a lot of you know vendors are are on a journey to um make the orchestration and deployment of of cloud live production easier and I think that's a key component of it thank you I have another question for no so from the AWS perspective what do you see as the unique advantage AWS offer broadcaster moving to the cloud and How do this compel or complement what we had just aired in term of scalability, reliability and enabling large scale contract creation? I would say I would always go back to the customer obsession part and the ecosystem that we have in working with partners, right? like everybody that we have here today. Just in media and entertainment, we have 600 partners and growing across different areas all the way from content creation, broadcast, content production, distribution as well as data science and analytics uh for energy. And so that becomes then again an enabler for our customers uh to be able to um you know getting to the cloud is maybe step one but the idea is what do you want to achieve beyond the potential what it is from a workflow standpoint that you can unlock from a transformation lens right that you want to be able to bring and experiment. So maybe uh testing for regionalization or uh testing with a new different or a new category of audiences. So all of these things are becoming enabled uh with the collaboration of our our partners. The other thing on the resiliency uh example or scalability, right? One of the things that we do or we're doing well with our partners is interoperability, right? So, uh whether it is with NDI, right? But interoperating the different software vendors together, right? I I think that is another area where we're helping transform our customer workflows, right? Because you want to test as much as possible and shorten the time to market with that. Yeah. But my next question is about that. So interoperability is a recurring challenge and standard standard like NDI 72110 and emerging cloud API all play a role. How do we ensure a cloud ecosystem where broadcaster can mix and match tools without being blocked it with a single vendor. So this is a question for all of you. I'll just as a quick comment and then maybe I'll hand it off to you. Um we we we want to do more of it, right? We've done together some interops with NTI. We've done interops with JPEG access. We've done interrupts where we were testing things like resiliency and breaking things, right? And so I think doing more of it helps. The beauty of NGI is that it is software focused and it enables that quick interoperability, right? One of the superpowers of NGI. So I think bringing more of it uh and more of these events uh would absolutely help. I'm not sure how exactly possible but I think that the um the cloud or virtual um production environment is uh very diverse by nature. So it's more than than anything else. And uh I think that for uh vendors it's now much harder to design something that's really really target because all the students that can actually translate in different formats and standard so are integral part of the workflows and as I said it's a really feature that allows you to uh switch your workflow from you know this kind of one day it's JP says I work another day it's H64 maybe over RTMP um and the cloud is actually providing me that flexibility and uh I think that all these conversions are now integral part of it. So I'm really much afraid about um you know what we knew it from 10 years ago uh because I think it's much much harder for the banks to create something like that and I think that the cooperation actually among the banks especially in this industry it's probably unheard of you know kind of like uh uh competing with each other but also I mean not only on personal level but on technology level we really try to work Okay, how to answer that? I mean, I think you know it is that interop that is the most important thing that I'd love to say there will be only one solution to this. I'd love that to be NDI. Great passion for NDI. Um, however, we know that this uh is somewhat of a dream for the next uh let's say couple of years. And so that interrupt, the ability to convert, the ability to accept anything, to output anything is going to be really important. But at the end of the day, everybody's a storyteller and so we have to enable anybody to be part of this this network there. I might even have a USB camera, you know, how do I get that into that sort of network, the converters as well as then looking at the accelerators. So if we can make NDI easier to use into AWS or out of or on the backbone of AWS, then great, you know, we can make that an easier decision to make. Um, and and I think those are the sort of areas that we're looking for uh as to what more can we do to enable this. Obviously, MXS is another really important part of this technology workflow. Making it easy so I can plug things in, tell my story, and all the magic's happening in the cloud is ultimately what we're trying to do here. This is not about technology itself. It's about the ultimate output uh that we're striving for. I agree with a lot of that. Um I think just to add on the the good and bad and I think really the good part of um live production in the cloud you know using things like you know NDI and AWS you know but using them as a standardsbased along with you know APIs and you know DevOps really allows for live production in the cloud to change out your your vendors or your technology stack on a per production basis and maybe that's because tool A is really good at, you know, problem A and tool B is really good at problem B. But I think it also kind of comes back to that everyone, you know, is afraid of vendor lock in and how do we, you know, um, help kind of, I think, cool customers down to those worries. I think coming back to what both Nor and and Steve said, I agree like AWS has led with with a lot of the um vendor interop, but I think the more that we show vendor interop in the cloud, people understand that at the end of the day that switching out a piece of hardware on prem is, you know, drackcking it and removing an SDI connection. And it's really no more difficult to do that in the cloud. If anything, you've got more flexibility there. And I think um really the biggest thing holding us back from that is just more flexible licensing and that's I think hard from the vendor side to achieve um but you know we need to work with customers to kind of figure out what the best path forward is on that. So that come on. So the last question for all of you let's say that we meet again here at IBC at in 2030 same place uh same people and how do you think that so in your imagination uh software and cloud softwarebased solution and cloud will reshape the broadcast market and the broadcast Well, um I think that uh uh the all the virtualization uh of the production is making the professional broadcast production more and more of quantity. So if uh two of us decide to produce a show or sport or whatever, we can do a one of the you know do we can put up the uh retro production in an hour and start streaming and I think this is more and more things are being produced and I believe that more and more things are going to be produced by independent you know small uh productions because uh the budget is no longer a problem. You would argue the problem is expensive. Yeah, it is expensive maybe if you do uh uh inefficiently if you need things like 247 but for live I think that it's true enable for you know anyone to afford production in a few minutes and very very low budget. I agree dear and I think that uh to your point prompted me to think about user generated content. So I think we're going to be discussing that significantly more. If you look at how newer generations are consuming content today already, right? I mean um in a theoretical kind of audience I'd ask like hey who's consuming uh news using social media, right? Like we're seeing more of that. I think there will be more discussions around it. A personal opinion would be potentially seeing IBC being IMC for international media conference. So kind of the the line that is it's no longer just broadcast so much accelerated transformation into creating content into connecting systems and into um enabling more uh you know user experiences and and focusing on that right so and I and I think we'll probably see less hardware focused solutions of course cameras and microphones being there uh absolutely but maybe less so on other hardware components Yeah, I was going to say certainly a lot less hardware uh has got to be the expectation. I think Visit's done its booth virtual for the last couple of years, you know, with a lot less kit to uh to bring around. So maybe the power consumption of it all will be lower as well. Um but you I think it is more senders and receivers, more of the endpoint devices, more of the things that we're connecting the talent to or the end consumer. I think it's going to be the focus of this. And I'm going to predict that we will not be talking about cloud, not because it's gone, but because it's just the thing and we need to to get over that hump and then we'll be talking about whatever the next thing will be there. You know, how best to connect bits of AI together or wherever we may be there. And I will say we're definitely still going to be talking about NDI. I uh I hope I won't be here in 2030. I'll be retired by then um thanks to the uh uh the power of cloud. But um in all seriousness uh I agree with Steve. I think that cloud won't be you know a buzzword anymore because it'll just be you know the new normal particularly when we're talking about live production in the cloud. I think the other things that you know I see maybe coming down the pike is um you know productions being essentially self assembling in the sense that you know you look at a news rundown or you look at you know the type of content that you want to create. This kind of comes back to what Norm was saying about, you know, uh, enabling for, you know, these content creators. You know, I think, uh, the the the number I heard from NAB was 50% of the folks at NAB this year were first year NAB. You got to believe that that's, you know, userenerated content, you know, coming alive. So um so I think you know self-chestrating signals I think that's you know the future of of NDI is like not just make it easy in the cloud but how does it you know um self-chestrate self-discover itself and then same thing with the technology base you know um that uh you know whether it's based on a news rundown or or based on the content that you're capturing um you know call this you know AI if you want to uh but at the end of the day you know the um the applications are going to be aware enough to be able to uh be ready to to capture that that that live experience you know automagically so to speak. So you know so thank you so much I don't think we need to wait the 2030 to meet again. Uh if you want to stay we will have soon an hour and thank you again for be be part of the of the panel. Thank you. Thank you, Roberto.

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