The enterprise has already seen cloud technologies power exciting advancements from software delivery to data analytics and beyond.

Driven by rising demand from content-hungry users and a growing ecosystem of enabling solutions, companies are also doubling down on cloud-native media production and content delivery models. Therefore, a discussion of current media supply chains — and how they’re shaping up for the future — is apt.

“We see a lot of customers have already moved their media supply chain operations into the cloud, and we’ve got a rich set of partners who have enabled that,” said Chris Blandy (pictured, right), global leader, strategy and business development, for media and entertainment at Amazon Web Services Inc. “What they are looking for primarily is operational efficiency, a secure way to manage their archives and tools to integrate multiple disparate supply chains into a unified view of their media operations.”

Blandy and Rowan de Pomerai (left), chief technology officer of Digital Production Partnership LTD, spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the “Optimize Your Media Supply Chain and Increase Velocity With AWS” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed trends in enterprise media supply chain management as companies streamline toward improving operational efficiency. (* Disclosure below.)

Aligning strategic priorities with current realities

A result of the recent pandemic is the tough economic realities across multiple industries. To counter that, most companies are streamlining supply chains to be more efficient and cost-effective. Maximizing return on investment given technology investment, especially, is a crucial focus at DPP, according to de Pomerai.

“During the pandemic, there was a lot about workforce and managing people,” he said. “Coming out of that and into a tough economic climate at the moment for many media organizations, I think that the operational efficiency piece is the focus right now. People are thinking about how they can optimize and do more with what they’ve got.”

As companies go deeper into their cloud usage, there’s also been a focus on unlocking new capabilities and use cases with media assets, according to Blandy. Using embedded or third-party tools, companies are leveraging artificial intelligence to enrich content metadata, extract content properties, perform speech-to-text transcription and manage rights, among others.

“I think the first wave focused on ROI, operational efficiency and migration,” Blandy stated. “Subsequently, after companies and customers started to get experience operating in the cloud, they realized it’s more than just an ROI case or a TCO analysis. It’s also a capability unlocked.”

Keeping on the AI/machine learning subject, there have also been tangible innovations paving the way for abilities such as automating certain aspects of the media supply chain. Examples of these can be seen in content localization and packaging/delivery, de Pomerai added.

Going beyond mitigating costs to impacting revenue and driving sustainability

Trends such as the infusion of AI and the adoption of event-driven workflows for media supply chains are already happening. In the near future, there’s going to be a rethinking of the media supply chain beyond being a cost-management exercise to a revenue and new business generator, according to Blandy.

“If you can automate your media supply chain for distribution, you can increase your time to market and time to revenue dramatically by having a cloud-based archive being able to automate your distribution processes,” he said. “We see customers who may have taken weeks or months to move a set of assets to a distribution partner in the past doing that now in a matter of hours or days, with entire libraries of content.”

Essentially, the speed and agility improvements in distribution are key as media companies monetize their growing content catalogs. There’s also the new business models that’ll sprout from media supply chain automation, such as the unearthing and re-syndication of archived content through free ad-supported streaming television, Blandy added.

“It’s been a business model for a very long time, but now it’s available in a much more personalized way,” he said. “There are deep archives of content that have not been syndicated for a long time that are now emerging, and we’re seeing new entertainment customers driving more revenue out of that archive than ever before.”

Companies are also addressing sustainability through cloud-driven media supply chains, starting in Europe and slowly spreading globally, according to Blandy.

“By moving your media operation into the cloud, especially with all the work we’re doing at AWS to get to 100% renewable energy by 2025 for all of our data centers, you can dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of your operation,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of demand from customers to move to a more sustainable model.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Optimize Your Media Supply Chain and Increase Velocity With AWS” 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