Streaming Cloud Migration is More About Ops and Orchestration than Tech
While cloud migration in streaming is often characterized as a primary technological, hardware-to-software shift, SVT (Swedish Television) Group Manager, Production Development Madelen Ottoson argues in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026 that the biggest transformation occurs on the operations end. What’s more, she tells Eyevinn Technology Media Solution Specialist Magnus Svensson, some aspects of the workflow will always remain on-prem even as operations shift, and Live Sports LLC Executive Director Jef Kethley chimes in that the biggest challenges in transitioning to cloud stem from the orchestrational demands of building out new infrastructure regardless of the hardware/software, cloud/on-prem mix.
Operational Shifts
Svensson initiates the discussion by asking Madelen to offer some insights on the shift from hardware to software-based streaming architecture at SVT, who assures them that they “did a lot more” than replace hardware with software.
“The bigger shift is operational,” she maintains. “It’s so important to not focus on taking functionality from hardware to software. It's about how you work in the control room or on site, wherever you are.”
The real advantage of moving some infrastructure to the cloud, she continues, is not so much the ability to implement remote operations as the “flexibility to be anywhere. If you need to be on site, be on site, but you can also be in the control room in your TV [studio], wherever it is.”
Ottoson goes on to explain that because SVT is a public service, “security-wise, we need to have a lot of things on-prem.” But regardless of how much of your operations remain on-prem or move to the cloud, “you have to shift in how you work and be able to use the opportunity with the software to have new roles. And also the location of where everyone is can shift from what we are used to. So I think it’s a really big opportunity, and one should really take care of it when they’re moving from hardware to software because, operationally, it's a really big shift.”
Turning to Kethley, Svensson says, “Jef, I know you're doing mostly everything remotely. I think you’re rarely on site nowadays. So what’s your take?”
“As much as we’re already doing remotely,” Kethley replies, “there’s still plenty of other opportunities to do other parts of [our productions] remotely. It depends on the scale of the events that we’re involved with, of course. With me doing mostly live sports these days, there is something about having people with hands-on [roles] onsite. And there’s just a certain amount that we have to have there. We’ve taken it a step further in our world. We were remotely operating cameras and driving them as if we were on site because that’s what we invested in, being able to do that. That was a game-changer for us.”
Orchestral Maneuvers
As much as Kethley acknowledges that moving operations off-site for live sports productions is something Live Sports LLC was “able to be very competitive with,” he agrees with Ottoson that “the bigger part” of the shift to cloud “is not about software” or “working it from anywhere.”
He says that the most significant change he sees is on “the orchestration side of building out the infrastructure, whether it is onsite, on-prem, in cloud, private cloud, public cloud, whatever it happens to be. That part is our biggest challenge and we’re still trying to solve that part. Being able to connect A to B to C to D and being able to do that efficiently. So what if I could turn on a hundred machines in an hour? I’d still have to connect a hundred machines, and that takes span-hours—unless it could be automated. And that’s where [AI] could possibly help us in that realm and that’s what we're really investigating. So I think it’s more than just taking the tool, converting it into a virtual tool, then using that virtual tool as software, wherever it happens to run.”
Kethley goes so far as to contend that for his company, the on-prem/cloud question is “irrelevant. I don’t care where it runs as long I could get signals in and out with reliability and security, as Madelen says. [Security] is something really big on our side too, especially when we're dealing with betting houses and overseas gaming that we don’t necessarily have here in the US, but we are feeding those. So we have to be very wary of security measures and make sure that things are low latency and also secure getting from point A to B.”
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