Cloud Computing in Post-Production
Posted: April 30, 2013
© S.John - Fotolia.com[/caption]If you were to say the word "cloud" 20 years ago, everyone would have thought you meant the clouds in the sky. Thanks to the digital age we're in, cloud has a new meaning, and it's helping people and businesses everywhere.
© S.John - Fotolia.com[/caption]If you were to say the word "cloud" 20 years ago, everyone would have thought you meant the clouds in the sky. Thanks to the digital age we're in, cloud has a new meaning, and it's helping people and businesses everywhere."The cloud" has existed for decades. Remember when the official graphic symbol for the internet was an "evil" cloud? Today, however, cloud is one of the most frequently used buzzwords. So many companies seem to offer a solution with or in the cloud, and it appears that at least one part of many software solutions or hardware set-ups has to be in the cloud somewhere and somehow.
This is an interesting development, considering that, compared to just a few decades ago, the method of collaboration and utilizing both hardware and software has changed fundamentally, moving away from large mainframes from former market leaders such as IBM, SGI, Cray, and others to personal computers. Although PCs have become more powerful and affordable, this approach had two major downsides: post-production facilities require high-end workstations that are powerful enough to handle all the applications as well as provide sufficient render power. In addition, the maintenance effort for all individual workstations is enormous, and keeping all workstations up-to-date with the latest software version is a costly endeavor.
At the end of the 90s, a few companies realized an opportunity to cut expenses for hardware and software updates by centralizing their applications and moving them onto the internet. Without sacrificing functionality, new web-based versions of certain applications became accessible via a generic internet connection, and the idea of an application service provider (ASP) was born. Similar to a terminal server-based infrastructure, the maintenance burden of every application was taken away from the individual workstations and shifted to a central location — to the cloud.
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