Why OTT platforms need to embrace the cloud

Authored by Piyush Somani, Managing Director and Chairman, ESDS Software Solution Limited.

Over The Top (OTT) platforms have been entertaining us long before the lockdowns and the pandemic with a variety of content. Unlimited data packs, sales on smartphones and affordable subscription plans are believed to have added to the binge-watch trend. Since the pandemic, the audience appetite for consumption has seemed to multiply and so has the space for making and producing that content has also equally seemed to have grown. India itself has numerous OTT platforms with regional language content along with international players like Netflix, Prime, Disney+ amongst the streaming services that are available. It is quite obvious that OTT is here to stay and will continue to create and produce content going further. As the demand for content grows, OTT players may have to up their game to sustain their subscriber base, churn enough content to stream as well as invest in creating original content and licensed content all keeping in mind the cost-effectiveness. Their ever-growing content that requires higher storage infrastructure and expertise to manage that data has piqued the OTT players’ interest in cloud technology.

Operations and Infrastructure

For OTT players it can be essential to improve and provide the best Quality of Experience (QoE) for the audience across all devices and to achieve that OTT players have embraced cloud-based solutions. With the help of cloud-based solutions, OTT players can scale up their operations and meet the high-traffic demand that allows the consumers to have a seamless streaming experience with less-to-no downtime. Adapting to the cloud may mean that OTT players will eventually have to steer away from the traditionally Capex-intensive data centre operations. The flexibility and distribution capacity that the OTT market demands may be answered by cloud-based solutions. Cloud allows the OTT players to rent as much as space they require rather than invest in setting up and maintaining their data centres, which will cost them a fortune in money as well as time. The pay-as-you-use model  could also help OTT players run an efficient IT infrastructure and boost their operations. Cloud may also be helpful in meeting the security needs that the OTT market needs.

Customised streaming

Every user’s streaming feed is unique based on their viewing history and preferences. This is because of smart data analysis. Users' streaming patterns are constantly studied, and their searches, skips, pauses, every minute pattern is analyzed. Through cloud technology, this data analysis and insights may help OTT players provide their consumers with their choice of content. The cloud technology could also assist in collecting user preferences and data for a machine learning model that supports recommendation engines to customise the feed as per the user’s profile. The feature of receiving notifications as per a user’s choice of content is also something done by the cloud. To effectively deliver content simultaneously to millions of consumers across the country, OTT players must partner with and invest in strong Content Delivery Networks (CDN) for support. After a user decides on what they’ll be watching and press play, the video player sends a request to the CDN to fetch that content from the cloud. The job of a CDN is to take the encoded and encrypted files from the cloud to their server that is closest to the user’s location and respectively onto the video player, all this within a matter of a few seconds.

The perfect match

The changing consumer usage pattern and the growing demand for content is essential for the OTT industry. With the help of cloud technology, OTT players could continue creating new content for their users and simultaneously learn from the consumer’s usage behaviour to deliver more content. Cloud technology is also believed to act as an efficient enabler for OTT platforms to keep up with the momentum of providing on-demand content. Flexibility, privacy, security, and agility among others are likely to be the top advantages of embracing the cloud. Cloud-based solutions are perfect for the OTT market to reach more people and expand the subscribers’ base while boosting revenue.