The delivery of video content to viewers from Fox Corp. will soon have a distinctly cloud flavor to it.

On Tuesday, Fox and Amazon Web Services Inc. announced a deal with AWS Media Services for transmission of Fox sports, news and entertainment content to TV and streaming customers. AWS cloud tools will also help run production facilities in Los Angeles, New York, and other locations around the country.

The agreement will replace an aging infrastructure which Fox has relied on since the 1990s.

“We never want to be in a position again where we use infrastructure from 30 years ago,” said Paul Cheesbrough (pictured), chief technology officer and president of digital at Fox. “No company in 2019 can afford to be in that position. By plugging into AWS, we get that constant drip feed of innovation as it comes.”

Cheesbrough spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed Fox’s longstanding relationship with AWS and how the company will use some of the latest cloud products and services (* Disclosure below.)

Transmission straight to cloud

The announcement this week is the continuation of a partnership between Fox and AWS that spans several years. Fox’s products, services and apps are built almost entirely on AWS, and the company is a big user of AWS SageMaker and Redshift, according to Cheesbrough.

Now Fox will place AWS Outposts, released this week for general availability, as an on-premises tool to handle the transmission of content to the cloud.

“We’re using them to move video from studios and football stadiums and news gathering locations straight into the cloud to be both managed and produced,” Cheesbrough said. “It stays natively in the cloud to be published out to distribution partners, whether it’s Comcast for cable or Hulu for live TV.”

Fox’s deal with AWS also includes the use of Local Zone, a newly announced piece of infrastructure that locates key services closer to customers. This is important to Fox, which is seeking to reduce latency and increase broadcast capability in the latest video formats.

“We’re predominantly a live company now; it’s the heart of our business,” Cheesbrough said. “We’ll be able to do both 4K and 8K natively through this infrastructure with AWS. Latency will be reduced heavily.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE