Where Do Cloud and Remote Production Reduce and Increase Streaming Costs?
The now-familiar narrative of livestreaming in the pandemic tells us that when social distancing compelled streamers to migrate from on-prem to remote production and the cloud, massive cost savings were our reward. But cloud-based streaming also carries hidden costs. NBCU’s Paul Kirchberg, Live X’s Corey Benkhe, and Sargeway’s Sarge Sargent discuss the true costs and savings of cloud and REMI operations and how to avoid the pitfalls in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2025.
Reflecting on the migration to cloud and remote production that kicked into high gear in spring 2020 when REMI suddenly became the only game in town, Behnke begins, "We're out of the pandemic now, so we don't have to talk about that anymore, which is great." With the necessity of social distancing in the rear view mirror, he continues that the way cloud and remote production's advantages are typically reframed now is in terms of cost: they're "often marketed as cheaper. I have four remote master control rooms that are on- prem and I also have a cloud control room. And looking at budgets, a lot of times they're not [cheaper] unless you're doing a recurring event."
Turning to NBC's Kirchberg, and acknowledging NBC as a remote production pioneer going back to "alpine skiing with old-school fiber," he asks, "In your experience, where do cloud and remote production genuinely reduce costs, and where do they quietly increase it?"
Scaling and Quality of Operations
"For me, I think it's really about scaling," Kirchberg says. "How often are you going to be leveraging the cloud fix? I know there's a huge initiative to move systems out of on-prem to cloud as we expand. And it does give you [benefits] with travel costs, so if you're going to do a local production, you don't have to send an entire team. With the Olympics, for instance, if I don't have to send 400 people, I can send 100 people and I can have some cost savings there just based on that with travel and hotel and things like that. But there's caveats there. You lose out on some hands-on skill. It does limit you in your ability to ensure that you're setting yourself up to have a strong production. But there's a lot of things that you can scale down. It does put a little bit more pressure on operations. Quality of operations is something that gets overlooked because it does take a unique individual to fill those roles--not only technically, but mentally." He adds, "There are a lot of things that you can do in the cloud now that you couldn't previously do. You can consolidate streaming initiatives and create deviations for unique viewership. So I think that adds value as well."
Paying for Cloud Data
Kirchberg notes that paying for data is also a critical contributor to cloud streaming costs. "As you move to the cloud, you're no longer dealing in baseband," he explains, "So now you got to pay for data, and then it scales."
"As far as scaling goes," Sargent concurs, "you can overprovision, so you have to be careful. That's one of the hidden costs: overprovisioning for an event and then forgetting to turn it off. I've seen that where people have just left it running because just forgot that they didn't turn it off. So you've got too much scale in your cloud instances and you're not going to actually use it."
Licensing Costs and Training
Sargent also cites licensing costs as another element that can raise costs on the cloud side. "The other thing that you get with cloud is increased licensing costs," he contends. "You've got more licensing with the cloud and hopefully you've got a good package with your cloud vendor based on how much utilization you're going to have. I think all of that can be negotiated."
"I think the final point I would have, as Paul touched on, is training," Sargent continues. "You've got to train people on cloud infrastructures, especially when it comes to incident management, because you got to know where that issue lies. Is it within your stack or is it within the cloud provider stack? And then who do you talk to at the cloud provider? Who's the throat to choke at that cloud provider when your stream is going down, you need to have somebody on the line that's going to be able to stand, sit there and work through it and get it back live?" "Great point," Benkhe says. "I think the operator one is what a one a lot of people forget because so many times, especially early on, you just loaded up the [technical director]. 'Oh, we lost the graphics operator. Oh, we lost the playback operator. Okay, so I'm supposed to do everything now.' I think that's a little crazy. And then the turning on, turning off, When I do demos of our virtual video control room software, I always tell people, 'You know the little sticker your mom put on things, 'Turn the lights off?' Turn it off, turn it off. You've got to turn it off."
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