Visitors to IBC can expect to see a lot from AWS, and a lot of AWS spread around show, as the company marks 10 years since it bought video processing pioneer Elemental Technologies.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of a new breed of companies that is making greater and greater inroads into IBC every year. Its progress through the halls and stands helps highlight how the industry has changed over the past decade, especially in the way that the cloud has first been adopted and then helped accelerate the introduction of other new technologies.
The main AWS stand this year promises more than 40 live demonstrations. The company is also co-hosting an Innovation Stage in Hall 14 with Nvidia featuring over 25 sessions delivered by AWS Partners, AWS customers, and AWS experts. And you can find the company at work on a massive number of partner stands threaded throughout the show.
This is the hyperscale era. AWS, along with rivals Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, is likely to become even more influential over the next decade.
So, it's interesting that one of AWS's main strands at the show is based around where this influence really started to accelerate and its acquisition of Elemental Technologies a decade ago.
Over the last decade, AWS Elemental Media Services has helped deliver some of the largest live streaming events. Netflix live streamed an NFL Christmas doubleheader in 2024, with 65 million US viewers alone tuning in for at least one minute of action. Tubi delivered the most-streamed Super Bowl in history, to a peak audience of 15.5 million, and NBCUniversal inserted personalized advertisements across 5,000 hours of Paris Olympics content on Peacock.
AWS Elemental Media Services' client list currently comprises the BBC, Formula 1, FOX, NBCUniversal, Netflix, PBS, Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi, Warner Bros. Discovery, and more. AWS Elemental, meanwhile, helps smaller customers stay on the cutting edge of video workflows, streaming video to small businesses, transcoding content for learning services, and more.
Here are some technical highlights from the last decade.
And here's Jesse Rosenzweig, Co-founder and CTO, Elemental Technologies, talking about the timeline. "Ten years already? The Amazon acquisition was, above all, a huge validation of the work the Elemental team had put in to become the most trusted and recognized brand in the industry. On a personal level, it redefined what 'Think Big' truly meant, making our wildest ideas possible. I feel immense pride seeing the AWS Elemental sign in Portland and watching the team's continued innovation and growth."
A decade on from that initial acquisition, AWS's presence at the show underscores the central role hyperscalers now play in shaping the technologies, business models, and workflows of the media industry. 10 years time? Based on current trends they will probably be even more embedded in the day to day of what we do as an industry.