Judeumeh's Blog

This is first in a series of posts about cloud computing and digital content which will look at some of the immediate impact, as well as emerging and potential future trends of digital content in the context of cloud computing.

Digital Content in Cloud

Once upon a time, it was normal expectation and practice to run a decent-sized content business entirely from your own servers, storage and website. Nowadays this is not necessarily part of the conversation, even for small content businesses, as a result of the pervasive awareness of this thing called cloud and all the benefits it can deliver to the bottom line. The obvious advantages (e.g. scale, flexibility and reach) far outweigh most of the real and perceived disadvantages, but for content businesses, and I mean those businesses that rely on digital assets for their livelihood, this is a critical step with an intolerably high cost of failure.

In order to play in this field, content businesses must make it a point to ensure they are well placed and able to handle challenges posed by certain key aspects of doing business in the clouds, so to speak. These include:

1. Storage – Along with the vast compute power, virtually unlimited storage is one of the key calling cards of the cloud optimist or evangelist. It is a compelling argument but there are still some key operational challenges to be faced in dealing with the vast amount of content stored in the cloud.

2. Security – Cloud security is a staple topic of criticism by those I would refer to as cloud pessimists, but even now it is still way too early to tell which way the dice will fall on this one

3. Collaboration – the ability to collaborate over space and time is another key attraction of cloud for content creators, business users and the even consumers (e.g. for User Generated Content)

4. Intellectual property – The ability to monitor and enforce IP rights is a slow burner of an issue which will only get hotter as the more immediate challenges get resolved

5. Emerging Usage models – The content industries face a major challenge dealing with constantly changing user needs and behaviours, (e.g. in the social context) resulting in the need for a highly flexible business model to cope with the onslaught; and this in my opinion, is where cloud technologies can really help enable the businesses of tomorrow

These and other related topics will form the main subjects for discussion in my subsequent posts for this series. In the meantime, I’d like to reiterate that the opinions expressed in this post and in the subsequent series of posts (and indeed my entire blog), are strictly mine and do not in anyway reflect the views of my employer, Capgemini, or the BCS Chartered Institute for IT.

DISCLAIMER:  This post is brought to you in partnership with Intel(R) as part of the “Technology in tomorrow’s cloud & virtual desktop” series.