Article Describing Advantages of AWS Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Promotes Zixi’s Delivery Over IP Network Paths As Creating a Consistent, Broadcast-Quality Content Experience
The Zixi SDVP is helping content providers deliver new sports and entertainment experiences over 5G networks, offering ultra low latency access to AWS compute and storage services for ultimate delivery to mobile devices. Read this excerpt written by Bill Vass, VP of Engineering, AWS, published in the The Wall Street Journal on how the hybrid cloud infrastructure helps companies accelerate digital transformation by offering lower costs, increased agility, and faster innovation.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. Since AWS pioneered the concept of cloud computing in 2006, millions of organizations—including startups, large enterprises, and leading government agencies—have moved to the cloud.
That’s because the benefits of operating in the cloud to an organization compared to owning its own on-premises data centers are compelling—lower costs, increased agility, faster innovation, and more. Customers have also told me it’s an important step in their digital transformation because it gives them access to hundreds of tools they can use to reinvent, improve, and modernize their operations.
But what about data and applications that can’t be moved to the cloud anytime soon? Our approach to this problem has evolved over the years to meet changing customer needs, and I’d like to share how we think about it today.
Cloud migration barriers
Although the vast majority of data and applications can be easily migrated to the cloud, some face barriers. Some need to be re-architected or “modernized” before they can move. And others need to remain on premises or in a specific location for the foreseeable future due to low latency, local data processing, disconnected operations, or data residency requirements.
Some examples of applications that need to remain close to the end user to achieve ultra-low latency are real-time gaming, video streaming, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. A few examples of data sets that require local processing are the data collected from an IoT device on a factory floor or digital workflows for video rendering and 3D modeling.
Even though these types of applications need to execute locally, they still often benefit from backend, cloud-based analytics and machine learning. Many organizations are also looking to use the cloud to centrally control the development, security, deployment, and management of these applications.
Extending the cloud
Traditional hybrid cloud solutions have tried to mix these on-premises systems with the cloud with limited success—organizations end up with a bunch of different tools and having to train IT staff on multiple platforms, which is complex and expensive.
Organizations have told us they want to be able to support a broad range of applications that have to remain on premises or closer to points of data creation and consumption (edge nodes) using the same infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools as they use in the cloud. At AWS, we’re reinventing hybrid cloud by extending the AWS experience to the places our customers need it, on-premises data centers being just one of many.
Creating a consistent experience
We have worked hard to innovate on behalf of our customers in the area of hybrid cloud. Today, customers can use AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to run applications in on-premises data centers, branch locations, manufacturing plants, retail spaces, hospitals, large metro centers, 5G networks, and more. We’re adding to this list every year so our customers can continue to accelerate their migration to AWS, even if their applications can’t reside in the cloud.
A great example of an organization taking advantage of hybrid solutions is Morningstar, which offers tailored financial advisory services. They have some applications, like real-time investment research and insights, that require ultra-low latency data processing. So they utilize AWS Outposts, a fully managed service with purpose-built hardware and software, giving them a consistent experience across their hybrid infrastructure.
Another example is Zixi, an industry leader in enabling dependable, live broadcast-quality video. To help content providers deliver new kinds of live-streamed sports and entertainment experiences, Zixi uses AWS Wavelength, which embeds AWS compute and storage in Verizon’s 5G network, to power its Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP). The SDVP leverages ultra-low latency access to AWS compute and storage services to process huge amounts of video and compress it for delivery to mobile devices.
Digital transformation
At AWS, we believe most applications will move to the cloud in the fullness of time. But that doesn’t mean organizations with applications that need to remain somewhere else in the meantime shouldn’t start getting the benefits of the cloud now. Based on our conversations with customers, we believe organizations want a hybrid experience—one that distributes AWS to where they need it with the same APIs, the same control plane, the same tools, and the same hardware they get in the AWS Cloud. That’s where we believe hybrid is headed and how we’re trying to enable it.
To learn more about hybrid cloud with AWS, click here.
