Why was it important for BBC Studios to make the move to the cloud?
As the Operations and Supply Chain Technology Product Group within Global Technology, our priority is to align creative technology capabilities to meet business goals. Our strategic objectives adhere to the MovieLabs 2030 Vision by bringing creative services and applications directly to the content. By reimagining workflows within a cloud-native framework, we have modernised our post production processes and built a centralised location for accessing and managing our content. This brings significant efficiencies, enables global collaboration and ensures we stay agile.
Which workflows have you transitioned to the cloud?
A core focus is our remote edit workflow, which provides the capability to tailor appropriate cloud resources to different editing types. Content that needs to be ring-fenced for long-term retention is archived in Amazon S3, with a tiering policy that ensures cost optimisation.
How has that increased productivity?
Our goal is to focus on creating engaging content for our audiences and not be impaired by repetitive and often time-consuming manual processes. Driving efficiencies via cloud automation means we can remove common operational bottlenecks that often hinder productivity. The ability to dynamically scale and adapt our compute resources in the cloud is also a huge benefit. Being able to control how resources are deployed ensures accurate ‘right-sizing’ to meet our creative requirements, while also guaranteeing access as and when the teams require it.
Why choose 7fivefive and AWS?
7fivefive’s consultative expertise and insight has been key throughout our cloud journey. The team are trusted partners that have helped us to design and implement solutions which allow us to dynamically scale based on business need, maximise utilisation, and enhance creativity. 7fivefive is embedded in the AWS ecosystem and this interoperability provides an important foundation for future development. AWS has invested heavily in R&D for the media sector and understands the unique requirements of creative workflows, so we wanted to take advantage of those benefits as new capabilities are rolled out.
How are you dealing with security?
As I mentioned, we are bringing services and applications to the content, but we are also bringing people. We have identity-based access that incorporates both user provisioning and gated rights. Our remote edit environment is integrated with BBC Single Sign-On as a mandatory requirement across all BBC Studios staff members and freelancers. The system is designed to ensure a high level of security, and we operate centralised logging for audits and reviews.
How has the cloud helped you work more efficiently with other regions?
Enabling cross-regional access to the remote edit environment has greatly enhanced collaboration across our geographically located creative teams. With automated file transfer workflows, teams can effortlessly share and update in-progress content, streamlining collaboration and accelerating delivery timelines.
How do you see BBC Studios continuing to use the cloud in the coming years?
This project has provided a foundation for innovation and resilience in a changing media industry. We have scaled virtual post production over the past five years with a future goal to increase our cloud presence further by implementing a cross-regional ‘follow-the-sun’ approach, allowing our creative teams to collaborate effortlessly on assets and projects across multiple geographic locations. We are very keen to build on this success and have committed to an ongoing partnership with 7fivefive until 2028.
