Cloud Video Transcoding -- Ultimately Rendering Legacy Hardware Dinosaurs Extinct

At the recent GigaOm Structure event, Amazon's CTO Werner Vogels laid out his predictions about where cloud services are going in the next few years.  And, one of his top predictions -- which we absolutely believe here at Sorenson Media -- is that enterprise-focused cloud services will be (and already are) highly disruptive to legacy hardware providers.  Gigaom re-casts this conclusion by writing "old hardware companies will have to fight extinction."

In the words of Vogels, "I do think that unless companies really take a new cloud mindset -- not just a cloud in your offering but really be a partner to your customers instead of a vendor -- and help them drive cost down," enterprise CIOs will look elsewhere.

"Amen" to that as Vogels' conclusion applies to the increasingly important central role played by video transcoding in the accelerating online video ecosystem.  To date, high volume enterprise video transcoding has been dominated by hardware providers who have largely ignored the cloud.  We here at Sorenson Media completely reject this legacy hardware mindset -- and have focused on offering the first real enterprise-grade cloud video transcoding/workflow solutions.  We offer a full portfolio of cloud-based solutions.  And, we absolutely are committed to the "partner"-focused mindset that Vogels emphasizes.

Case in point -- Shutterfly -- the largest memory-sharing service in the U.S.  For over two years now, Sorenson Media has been the full end-to-end video solutions partner for Shutterfly, managing their video service which is seamlessly integrated into the overall Shutterfly customer experience.  Our managed service harnesses the power of the cloud -- has proven to scale -- and delivers optimized video for massive numbers of Shutterfly customers.

We at Sorenson Media believe in continuing to innovate with software-based services, especially cloud-based solutions.  We absolutely believe legacy hardware providers ultimately will be marginalized.  In the words of Vogels, those who ignore the cloud do so at their own peril -- "If dinosaurs aren't changing, well we know what happened to dinosaurs."