Media IT Leaders Say Distributed Cloud Will Boost Performance, Lower Cost

Today’s priorities require a distributed cloud

In an Akamai-commissioned study The Great Cloud Reset, Forrester Consulting surveyed more than 400 global IT leaders about the evolving distributed cloud computing ecosystem and why they say they need it. The primary takeaway from the respondents is clear: The centralized cloud architecture of the past cannot support how applications are built today and will be built in the future.

The respondents, including those from the media and entertainment industry, emphasized the advantages of a distributed cloud computing architecture, which allows companies to easily build and deploy workloads and applications closer to users and devices.

Let’s look at some of the specific issues faced by IT leaders in media and entertainment and the benefits they identified of a distributed cloud.

Getting closer for lower latency 

A highly distributed cloud computing platform means that applications and workloads are closer to end users. It’s why, as the study highlights, 88% of media and entertainment industry respondents said they need a flexible cloud architecture instead of a legacy centralized cloud platform. 

Being closer to viewers addresses latency concerns, and the ability to move workloads to platforms with low egress costs helps reduce cloud spending.

Meeting requirements for data sovereignty and security

Distributing applications and workloads also helps companies meet increasingly stringent data localization requirements in a way that a centralized cloud cannot. 

Consider that 88% of respondents currently have six or more workloads that must run in multiple regions, and 65% have six or more workloads that must run in multiple jurisdictions. Keeping data closer to where users live is key to resolving what could be a major regulatory challenge. 

Finding a trusted partner

With the issues of latency and data sovereignty at top of mind, media and entertainment IT leaders have placed a new emphasis on finding cloud providers that can help them with their main priorities, including:

• Engaging with a cloud provider that supports workloads across a range of cloud and edge environments (76%)

• Meeting stringent data residency requirements (73%)

• Working with a known and trusted partner for distributed cloud computing (84%)

Additionally, 78% of respondents say it’s “important” or “critical” to have a partner that has scalability across the globe, including in underserved markets.

These priorities can be addressed by enabling companies to build and deploy applications and workloads anywhere from core to edge, on an open platform, with a trusted partner. And the recognition of those needs has caused a shift toward cloud-native architecture.

What do we mean by “cloud-native”?

In short, “cloud-native” is about portability. With the centralized model of cloud computing, workloads can become trapped (for lack of a better term) within a single cloud because of proprietary tools and vendor lock-in. But with an open source distributed cloud, workloads can be cloud-native and matched with the cloud platforms that run them best. 

The Forrester study notes that 67% of media and entertainment IT leaders said a cloud-native architecture will result in better performance and 61% said it will result in increased revenue.

Adopting a cloud-native architecture is a practice that’s underway and accelerating, with 98% of media and entertainment IT leaders saying that they expect their apps to be mostly cloud-native within a year. 

Distribution targets the key pain points 

More than half (55%) of the IT leaders surveyed for the study named the complexity associated with a multicloud strategy (the difficulty of integration, scaling, maintenance, and so on) as their biggest frustration. For 43% of respondents, the lack of internal skills to build processes needed for edge computing or specific cloud environments was the biggest challenge.

Choosing the right workload for the right cloud

To help overcome those challenges, 70% of media and entertainment industry respondents said it’s essential that they align workloads with the right cloud. By engaging with cloud providers who can meet their requirements for building and deploying workloads and applications closer to employees and users, they expect to see increased revenue and improved reliability.

Improved user experience

Distributing workloads across the cloud continuum pays off in terms of performance. In a recent webinar about The Great Cloud Reset, our guest speaker, Forrester Principal Analyst Lee Sustar, explained that when you leverage what specific clouds do best, you optimize workload efficiency. That, in turn, improves user experience.

And in media and entertainment, user experience is the be-all and end-all. As Akamai CTO Andy Champagne said in the same webinar, “Application performance is the defining factor in where users want to go.”

Summary

The Akamai-commissioned Forrester study shows that, overall, IT leaders are looking for a decentralized cloud model to support modern applications, reduce latency and complexity, and give users a responsive, interactive experience.

For global companies, like many in the media and entertainment industry, it’s necessary to run workloads in multiple regions and countries worldwide. Distributing them not only improves performance, but also satisfies data residency and regulatory requirements. 

The study shows that media and entertainment professionals have an almost unanimous understanding that the move to a distributed cloud computing platform is the right solution for building and deploying cloud-native applications.

Learn more

For the full picture of media industry leaders’ responses to the survey, download a copy of the media spotlight from The Great Cloud Reset today.