Radio’s Place in The Cloud
February 14, 2012
The hot technology buzzword in computing today is the “cloud.” You see this used all over the place from consumer services like Apple’s new iCloud™ or Pandora to business services from companies such as Oracle or IBM but what does this mean to radio? What is the cloud? Does radio have a place in the cloud? Does radio care and if so, why?
Let’s start with what “the cloud” is. Simply put, having something in the cloud just means that where you used to operate your own servers (either on your site or more likely in a data center) that performed all of your digital services (ad management, trafficking, automation, hosting, streaming, etc.), you can now run your digital services on computers that someone else manages and maintains. Furthermore, cloud companies’ offer a host of important but low-level services that you don’t have to think much about anymore including fault-tolerance so your services are always “on”, ability to add new capacity automatically, disaster recovery, and more. This means cloud computing can dramatically lower your costs and will certainly lower the cost of launching new services and maintaining them…
All of this is now possible because the cost of the internet has fallen dramatically and consistently, and software has gotten much more sophisticated which means it is actually easier to use across a network and it is now being designed from the outset to work this way. In fact, this is how we’ve designed our new digital trafficking system, Clarity™ to work. It is “in” your radio station but really the guts of it reside in massive, secure, and redundant data centers.
The fact that these programs and services reside somewhere else is good for radio not only for the above mentioned reasons but it is also good for your vendors that have Cloud offerings too. That’s because we don’t have to spend our time and ultimately your precious dollars maintaining a bunch of computers and networks. We can now spend our time doing what we do best- writing programs that make your life easier and make your station more profitable.
There are other benefits to the Cloud, particularly if you are operating a cluster. Instead of each station working independently or someone schlepping files or sending tons of emails back and forth, the stations can be virtually connected and all information that you want to share, things like inventory levels, forecasts, campaign performance etc. can be aggregated and is available to anyone you choose. Further, this is now available across multiple devices, not just PC’s, so you can log in from an iPad and have real time campaign performance information and in addition to the “cool” factor, it is just plain better for your business.
There have been questions about security regarding the migration of your systems to the cloud. I think this is more of a perception issue of no longer seeing lots of computer boxes and knowing that your data is somewhere else. To be clear, there’s nothing inherently less secure about a cloud offering. In fact, it could be argued that in fact it is more secure because the data and computers are only managed by the best of the best IT professionals, people who have many, many companies data entrusted to them. In November 2011 Amazon reported that they had over 20K Cloud Front customers and their Cloud business is roughly doubling YoY.
If you are a GM or an owner and you would like to move to the cloud, there are several things you can do quickly and easily. An obvious choice is to move your Microsoft Office components from an on –premise solution to their hosted option. This means that Microsoft will manage your entire Exchange system, reducing your hardware needs and IT overhead. There are also a number of hosted IP based phone systems that eliminate the need for costly, complicated hardware and provide great features, usually at a lower cost than you can do it yourself. And, of course, you can move your online ad management system to the cloud.
In summary, what the Cloud means to radio is that it has never been easier or more cost effective to launch new services, particularly digital services. As the importance of these digital services grows, the cloud is enabling radio to invest at a lower cost and generate a highr ROI faster than ever before. In short- the cloud is enabling radio to compete and win.