How OTT Platforms Benefit from Cloud Wars
Yes, the cloud wars are raging, and here’s how content owners benefit, no matter who wins. When you find yourself in a battle zone, it’s time to worry. OTT platforms, however, have a war in their neighbourhood that benefits them immensely because the sparring parties are fighting not for land or resources but for their […]
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Yes, the cloud wars are raging, and here’s how content owners benefit, no matter who wins.
When you find yourself in a battle zone, it’s time to worry. OTT platforms, however, have a war in their neighbourhood that benefits them immensely because the sparring parties are fighting not for land or resources but for their streaming traffic.
Video streaming: Cloud’s golden goose
The battle for the cloud began a little over a decade ago when video streaming began. YouTube’s birth in 2005 gave content creators a new platform to publish and monetise their content. As a result, movies, sports and entertainment became entirely different experiences, and the world flocked to watch.
At the time, content resided on dedicated, platform-owned servers, to which users connected to access video content. It was expensive and cumbersome, ultimately affecting content owners’ profitability and consumers’ viewing experience. Heavy video files took long to buffer. Distributed computing helped to some extent, but the real game-changer was the entry of cloud into the world of streaming. Using Content Delivery Networks (CDN), streaming platforms could give viewers easy access to buffer-free content at lower hardware, software and maintenance costs. Today, with video constituting over 80% of internet traffic, it’s a prime mover in a market predicted to touch $6.78 trillion by 2029.
Such a huge market has attracted the attention of big tech giants. AWS slowly edged Akamai as the leading CDN. AWS’ early experiences with OTT technology providers like ViewLift helped beef up its video streaming capabilities for the streaming industry. In recent years though, Microsoft and Google have made inroads into AWS’ dominance. They are influencing content owners to switch with incentives like enhanced capabilities and new revenue streams. And when something catches tech giants’ attention, it’s time to sit up and take notice. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, for example, is a clear indicator that big tech rarely invests in or subsidizes what’s not truly promising. Video streaming is that next big thing in media.
Content owners and consumers: The ultimate winners
Video’s dominance in the media sector makes OTT traffic a valuable source of data and revenue for cloud majors. They’re more than willing to share the spoils. Microsoft, for example, signed a multi-year deal with the NBA that nets the league approximately $70 million a year in return. The NBA now gets about $115 million per year in new spending from the tech sector. It’s not just the biggies like NBA who benefit. Regional content owners with high viewership stand to benefit even more from such sponsorship deals
Cloud wars also help content owners negotiate better pricing, as cloud providers offer competitive bundles of services and infrastructure. This flexibility allows content owners to choose the cloud services that suit them most. ViewLift, for example, will provide its customers with the choice of running on AWS, GCP or both – as the first-ever multi-cloud OTT tech stack provider.
And, as competitors snap at their heels, cloud providers keep innovating, empowering content owners to focus less on ad serving, encoding, delivery speeds and latency and more on content creation. Viewers also benefit immensely, as they have an entire ecosystem constantly innovating and improving, enriching content and viewing experiences.
The cloud wars will be a titanic struggle, but one where OTT platform owners and end-users come up on top.
