Cloud-native supply chains and advanced video production technologies are becoming a key influence in the media content world.

Gartner analysts have predicted that more than 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first strategy by 2025, and the media ecosystem is very much a part of that trend. To assess what this will mean for the future media landscape, theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, hosted the “Optimize Your Media Supply Chain and Increase Velocity With AWS” event on May 4. Interviews with executives from a broad range of digital media management companies offered a clearer sense of how cloud-native adoption is reshaping the media industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three insights you might have missed from theCUBE’s livestreamed event:

1. Big studios are still influential, but individual content creators are pushing the media envelope.

The creator economy is in the process of transforming the media landscape. A study released by Adobe Inc. last fall found that the global creator economy added 165 million new participants over the past two years.

Media companies are seeing the impact of this, as creators add new skills and become more digitally savvy. “We see a lot of YouTube creators,” said Benjamin Desbois (pictured), chief revenue officer of Telestream LLC, in an interview with theCUBE. “And they push the envelope trying to be more efficient. TikTok is a big thing. You need to be able to build TikTok stuff, but once you do the first level, as we’ve seen in YouTube, then you start getting to a much, much higher level.”

This is a trend worth watching, because some of the creators who start small and catch on as major influencers could become bigger and build established new companies in the digital media space. Startup companies and subsidiaries of large players such as Sony are building tools that feed the creator ecosystem.

“One of the things that we think is really important is that we’re putting the tools in the hands of those creators early on so that, eventually, as they grow up to be those larger, small-to-mid-size companies and maybe these large enterprise, they’ve been using the same tools for all that time,” said David Rosen, vice president of cloud applications and solutions at Sony Electronics Inc., in an interview during the event. “There’s no question that they’re having a massive impact, not only in the talent pipeline, but the influence that they’re having on the major media organizations.”

Here are theCUBE’s complete video interviews with Benjamin Desbois and David Rosen:

2. FAST channels are driving cloud speed and automation in the delivery of streaming content.

Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc. used a presentation to advertisers in New York to make the announcement of a new hub for free, ad-supported TV, known as FAST channels. In making the launch, the tech giant noted that FAST programming had grown 300% over the past six months.

FAST channels resemble traditional television viewing where viewers watch a particular program on a set channel at a pre-arranged time. But the content can be streamed to multiple devices and it’s free.

In addition to Amazon, the Washington Post, Google TV and ABC have jumped on the FAST channel bandwagon. This is a rapidly evolving area of the media industry that is also fueling cloud-native usage.

“FAST channels are a great example where customers have moved their archives into the cloud, they’ve mined more metadata, and now they’re able to automate the process of setting up FAST channels and experiment with what’s working with customers very quickly,” said Chris Blandy, global leader, strategy and business development, for Media & Entertainment at Amazon Web Services Inc., in conversation with theCUBE. “It’s been a business model for a very long time, but now it’s available in a much more personalized way.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Chris Blandy, who was joined by Rowan de Pomerai Rowan de Pomerai, chief technology officer of Digital Production Partnership Ltd.:

3. Forget repatriation, media in the cloud could stay there for a long, long time.

Cloud costs and a desire among some companies to move workloads from the cloud to on-premises systems are driving a trend known as repatriation. A recent analysis published by SiliconANGLE noted several signals associated with this trend.

Yet the rise of cloud-native applications in the media world points toward a potentially different scenario. SDVI Inc.’s Rally cloud-native media supply chain management platform has grown adoption among major media companies because it can facilitate not just storage of massive volumes of content, but their delivery as well.

“Once you’ve got your content in the cloud, why take it out?” asked Geoff Stedman, chief marketing officer at SDVI Corp., in an interview with theCUBE. “Why not do all of the processing and packaging and delivery from the cloud, which many of the digital properties do? Sony Pictures is using the Rally platform to help with its content deliveries. Really any company that has content that they’re trying to package up and prepare to hand off to delivery partners, those are the companies that can benefit from optimizing that supply chain.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Geoff Stedman:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Industry Technology Partners Showcase, here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Optimize Your Media Supply Chain and Increase Velocity With AWS” event. Amazon Web Services Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE