Moving to the cloud: The state of the art for cloud-based production pipelines

Cloud computing, with on–demand access, is making inroads into traditional production pipelines. Pressure on production efficiency, desire for distributed geographic access to labour, production turnround requirements, the availability of open source tools and ease of development are pushing creative studios in the media production market to explore and adopt cloud–based technologies. Are the benefits of this new wave of creative and technical democratisation fact or myth? What is the state of the art? What are the primary technical, social and operational challenges? What are the primary benefits? How do executives, producers, production managers and artists navigate this complex new environment? What are the current operational and business upsides? Where are the hidden risks? How do pipelines adopt these new technologies and how easy is it for artists to work in new paradigms? This paper discusses media production environments taking place in the ‘cloud’, summarises the current state of the art and provides a roadmap for individuals and businesses considering moving to the cloud. The paper discusses workflow challenges, infrastructure changes, pricing models, remote personnel management, creative control, internet security, licensing and metred rendering. Cost expectations are reviewed — with examples of areas for savings and areas where costs increase. This paper also considers how to prepare for cloud computing and cloud production pipelines.