Faultline snatched at the opportunity to hear from Eluvio CEO Michelle Munson, who was speaking at the HPA Tech Retreat to coincide with last week’s launch of Eluvio Live. While we walked away without hearing a single mention of Eluvio Live, which brings artists and publishers into the fold of the famed Content Fabric technology, this was purposely set up as a much broader discussion on unpacking the future of media and entertainment, so we were not disappointed.
Even before clicking play, Faultline learned something new, which is that the Eluvio Content fabric runs on nodes that are hosted exclusively on Equinix data centers around the world. With the session sponsored by the US data center giant, it was inevitable that Munson would shower Equinix with praise, focusing on uniformity of IP connectivity and availability of data centers to host Eluvio’s nodes (Equinix boasts some 210 data centers across 25 countries).
It transpires Eluvio and Equinix share common ground on the fabric front, with Equinix offering its own Fabric infrastructure for connecting digital infrastructure and services, although the respective fabrics are very different in nature. Eluvio – as we outlined last week – is a novel, decentralized software network for media. This is not a cloud in a traditional sense, nor a CDN in a traditional sense, but essentially offers a componentized replacement of cloud-based functions including transcoding, CDN distribution, CMS, packaging, and aggregation services – one that avoids making copies and is therefore a bandwidth efficient design targeted at low latency distribution.
That said, Munson is apparently pleased with the ability of the Equinix fabric, as a novel introduction by Equinix, that peers nodes directly with existing public clouds, such as Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform, especially for static media. This has helped Eluvio reach a footprint it can scale upon, and the company has not looked back on its decision to roll with Equinix at such a critical period for media – giving it sites around the world where all Eluvio’s nodes effectively run the same software.
“We need data center consistency. The Equinix Fabric, which we use for IP connectivity between nodes, has been uniform and predictable for us and that is important,” said Munson.
Heading outside the data center, Munson described how typical media supply chains are siloed and expensive, while OTT streaming of content is based on aging technology. “The CDN is 20 years old, cloud technology is 15 years old, and there is a certain assumed cost that comes with that sort of change. Now one can take a more innovative approach that is vastly more efficient in resources and is designed to be repurposed. A network that is not the same old public cloud + CDN can be transformative,” she elaborated.
Things started to get more interesting when Munson painted a picture of what she coins “the attention economy.” Perhaps spurred on by the Netflix hit docudrama ‘The Social Dilemma’, Munson believes that the public is now abundantly aware of the direct value in online content, which has built up to a tipping point over 20 years of the internet being used in a certain way.
“I think we’re moving into another phase where the attention economy is going to be transparent, and audiences will have more opportunity to have more control over their data. People who make content will be liberated, when they were previously at the mercy of large media companies to reach audiences. With the right innovation, we can take us to a new phase that is more direct. The US is hungry for this. Unfortunately, it’s due to backlash from the way the internet has become,” she predicted.
This is certainly an interesting take from Munson on a broader trend of not just end users but publishers and artists wrestling back control. This is happening across the board in media and entertainment, with so much innovation focused on making media more programmatic and data-based in nature, paving the way for applying AI and machine learning to workflows.
“Whatever one’s opinions are of the crypto economy, I can attest that it is a fantastic foundation for scale. We really believe that is part of the next phase of the content economy and will be good for content and data ownership,” she added.
One thing Eluvio apparently sees in every customer it works with, is an understanding that content will be smart, and everyone is trying to exploit the idea of loathing large internet technology companies today.