Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Leads Digitization

The media and entertainment industry in India has undergone a rapid transformation in the past few years. Not only in the kind of cinema or daily soaps we create but the entire back end process of production underwent a gigantic change which we commonly call as ‘digitization’.

A CII-PwC report said that Indian media and entertainment industry is expected to grow at an annual average growth rate of 18 percent to touch Rs 2,245 billion by 2017 and this growth will bring endless opportunities for software providers to bring in new initiatives for high quality viewing.

When compared to sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and others, Indian media and entertainment industry is far ahead when it comes to digitization. In fact, India is actually ahead of other countries as well in this sector.

“Our very own Star TV went tapeless in April 2011, while BBC will be going tapeless on October 1st this year. Here is one scenario where India was not following other countries, but leading the change,” says Ramki Sankaranarayanan, founder and CEO, Prime Focus Technologies, technology arm of media services company, Prime Focus

As all indicators show that our media and entertainment industry will go the digital way and the use of cloud computing will gain a strong foothold.

“Adoption of hybrid cloud will increase in the media and entertainment sector. One might have invested in storage internally but suddenly when a demand arises it is difficult to scale. This is where hybrid cloud comes in,” says Sankaranarayanan.

Storage is a major challenge for the Indian media and entertainment industry. It was also one of the major drivers for hybrid cloud to gain ground.

“When it comes to challenges faced by the media and the entertainment industry, the most common one is storage, it is going through the roof now. The reason behind this is digitization. Due to the use of highly sophisticated devices the quality of the image size has increased to a great extent. From standard definition to high definition, high definition to 2K and now we are talking about 4K. Therefore when you want to deliver a much higher resolution image or a content, storage becomes an issue,” says Sankaranarayanan.

Apart from storage, scaling and dealing with throughput challenges also stands as a barrier for the media and entertainment industry.

“A particular bandwidth is required to playback a video. Previously we were habituated in playing a 25 GB file and now suddenly, we have to playback a 50 or 100 GB file in one single second. So, the storage has to deliver that much more content. Therefore, now we need more spindles throughout the same data, which means there is a throughput challenge,” says Sankaranarayanan.

The cost of ownership also remains a significant challenge. The more disks you spin, the cost of ownership goes through the roof says Sankaranarayanan.

Storing data is just a part of the business but making that data available is equally important.

Sankaranarayanan is of the opinion that not only one needs to store data but also make it available at all times. Every endpoint has to be up and running 24/7 when it comes to the media and entertainment industry. A single point failure can prove to be disastrous for a television channel.