Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) December 2016 Volume 33, Issue 11 | Page 10

10 NEWS & VIEWS Automated media processing has left the building – exploring the transition to the cloud The transition to “the cloud” in our industry has been challenging. In order to understand how we address cloud computing, we must follow the history of how we got here. Minnetonka Audio provides quality-first audio processing, resulting in a number of disruptive innovations in our field. Twenty years ago, we provided audio processing for the new platform of the time: the digital audio workstation (DAW). Sold as plug-ins that professional audio engineers could integrate into their DAWs, encoding to the codec of the day, such as using our SurCode for Dolby Pro Logic II, became a reality. We call this “on-premise” processing, or processing on individual client workstations. Each on-premise system required maintenance, as well as continual upgrades in hardware. Ten years ago, we began transitioning our products to automated Enterprise-level platforms that offer facility-wide workflow management and audio processing. By focusing on the Enterprise, overall hardware, maintenance and labour costs could be reduced. Minnetonka’s AudioTools Server platform is now in a single “machine room” environment connected to shared storage, but requires substantially less engineering and maintenance effort than a DAW. A server-based system can provide the flexibility to load balance between multiple systems and directly integrate into systems such as Telestream’s Vantage, Harmonic’s Carbon & WFS, Avid’s Interplay MAM, and more. Today, we transition again to “offpremise” computing to meet the needs for greater scalability and fast turnaround. AudioTools Cloud offers scalable on-demand computing resources using Amazon’s EC2 processing and S3 object storage platform to provide media processing facilities with tremendous flexibility. We have three models for off-premise (cloud) processing. AudioTools Cloud OnDemand is an online Web-service that offers the processing that you want, when you need it, and you pay only for what you use. Workflow control, processing modules, and reporting all happen within the Amazon EC2 Instance as well as the S3 Cloud Disk, requiring no on-premise hardware costs or ongoing maintenance. Expansion to handle peak processing requirements is possible by configuring additional EC2 instances, which can then be taken offline when not required, saving money during downtime. AudioTools Server facilities can apply the licences that they own to their on-premise Jayson Tomlin, VP of Marketing, Minnetonka Audio/ Linear Acoustic, The TV Solutions Group of the Telos Alliance processing plant or to a cloud-based thirdparty engine, such as Telestream’s Vantage Cloud. Vantage Cloud platform natively supports third-party connectors, including the Vantage AudioTools Connector for integration with AudioTools Sever and AudioTools Cloud. Custom-defined workflows, profiles and licences can be shared in this hybrid on-premise and cloud architecture, giving maximum flexibility and scalability. AudioTools Cloud can interoperate directly with Telestream Vantage Cloud in two unique ways. AudioTools Cloud BYOL – Bring Your Own License AudioTools Server user