Avid has announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp to develop and market cloud-based solutions and cloud services for the media and entertainment industry.
As part of this agreement, Avid will use Microsoft Azure as its cloud hosting platform, to stage a range of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform.
An Avid statement says: ‘With a cloud-based offering built on Avid’s portfolio of the industry’s best and most comprehensive creative tools and media workflow solutions, the strategic cloud alliance will enable media organisations and creative professionals to quickly and easily leverage the efficiencies, flexibility and agility that the cloud enables – made possible by Avid’s flexible approach to licencing, deployment and commercial options. The cloud will also enable innovation by the companies around new media workflows, new operational capabilities and new business opportunities. While Avid’s hosting and services offering will be based exclusively on Microsoft Azure, the company’s commitment to openness will allow customers to make their own cloud hosting decisions.’
The alliance is the basis of a multi-year agreement under which both companies will make ‘significant mutual commitments and investments in technology, product development and go-to-market efforts’. Under the technology and product development cooperation elements of the agreement, to support Avid’s product development efforts and investments, Microsoft will invest additional resources and funding to help accelerate time-to-market for targeted cloud-based solutions and specific Azure-based cloud services for the media and entertainment industry. As part of the commercial cooperation, Avid will offer Microsoft Azure hosting and media services exclusively as an integral part of its own portfolio of cloud-based solutions and cloud services. In addition, the companies will work in close cooperation on the overall go-to-market approach, which will help clients migrate to the cloud easily and more cost-effectively, and allow them to work with both companies seamlessly.
‘We at Avid are very pleased to be entering into this strategic cloud alliance with Microsoft, and believe this will be big for the industry, and even bigger for our clients,’ says Avid Chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr. ‘The combination of these two strong technology innovators will set the pace for the industry. The depth and breadth of this technical and commercial collaboration will drive significant value for our mutual clients and help them successfully navigate their own journey to the cloud.’
‘With the industry’s preeminent global community of media enterprises and creative professionals that make up Avid’s client base, the company’s unique platform approach and its extensive domain knowledge, combined with our own powerful Azure cloud platform, we believe that this unique alliance is well-positioned to lead the media industry into the cloud,’ offers Microsoft Executive VP of Cloud and Enterprise Group, Scott Guthrie. ‘Microsoft is pleased to collaborate with such a market leader in media and entertainment, and feel strongly that together our companies will produce something powerful for the industry, creating an intelligent, media-savvy cloud solution.’
‘Our competitive evaluations of the leading cloud providers showed that Microsoft Azure is the most open, trusted and global cloud platform that also enables true hybrid-cloud computing – which we believe is very important to media enterprises. This will give our customers maximum flexibility to move at their own pace and orchestrate workflows across on-premise and cloud-hosted environments, which will unleash a new generation of capabilities for distributing and optimising media,’ Hernandez Jr says. ‘With Microsoft’s strategic alliance and our joint investments to accelerate cloud development and innovation, this cooperation will give our joint customers a competitive edge.
‘Avid is making a major play in the cloud, which is a significant step for the company,’ he adds. ‘This represents the culmination of our Avid Everywhere vision and strategy for the industry, which will open up significant growth prospects for the company as it looks to maximise the opportunities that the media industry’s migration to the cloud will unlock.’
The alliance between the companies is expected to deliver a continuous stream of hosting and services offerings over the next 18 months, with the first wave of offerings slated for a phased release during the second half of 2017.
