Introduction to Vantage Cloud Port

Vantage can simultaneously process premise and cloud-based content....in a single Workflow!

Since most media companies wish to continue to use their on-premise technology while moving new workflows and burst capacity to the cloud, the dominant on-premise market presence of the Vantage Media Processing Platform makes it the perfect choice to support these hybrid workflows. Vantage Cloud Port was created to address these applications.

With the new consumption-based actions in Vantage Cloud Port, users only pay for media processing results.

Vantage Cloud Port outcomes at a glance

  • Vantage Cloud Port is location and resource aware:  Vantage workflows automatically “follow the media.”
  • As media files are orchestrated, Vantage Cloud Port automatically provides intelligent and efficient management of cloud storage, avoiding egress fees and providing operational efficiencies that are easily monitored.
  • Workflows can be made to burst in peak demand situations – you’re ready for worst case workload without constant over provisioning. Consumption based pricing protects your bottom line.
  • Best of breed partner integrations that have made Vantage the industry standard are now available in a flexible hybrid cloud offering.
Diagram VCP

SaaS, IaaS, Hybrid — you can have it
your way

Telestream has deep cloud and hybrid experience, with SaaS solutions on its Telestream Cloud site, and powerful Vantage offerings on-premise and in the cloud via Elastic domain. But now with Vantage Cloud Port, Vantage customers can very easily create powerful and flexible workflows with the ease of a few clicks, using all the tools they’re familiar with and that extend flexibly to the cloud. Using proven solid technology that extends Vantage with your choice of cloud services (including AWS, Azure and Google) you can:

  • Build upon Vantage resources you already have
  • Get started immediately with no workflow onboarding needed
  • Modify workflows at anytime, using the tools you already know
  • Startup and scale easily
  • Have pricing that is transparent, predictable and competitive

Cloud Port Workflows can include Vantage services that are unavailable or unlicensed in the local domain

Vantage users can ease into the cloud – a hybrid approach is a natural next step for existing systems.

  • Because it’s Vantage, you own & control your workflows.
  • Workflow Designer resides on infrastructure, but some or all media processing can be in the cloud.
  • Workflows deploy into the cloud using containerized micro services with transcoding engines identical to on-prem services. Telestream Cloud orchestrates services and ensures visibility.

Vantage Cloud Port – how it works

VCP Orchestration
VCP Flip

In addition to the flexible licensing options already available for the Vantage Media Processing Platform, Vantage Cloud Port enables consumption-based operation (and pricing) for Vantage actions. More specifically, Vantage Cloud Port defines a set of media processing actions which can be run in a consumption-based, SaaS mode. These Vantage Cloud Port actions tackle the heavy-duty media processing while Vantage software handles workflow design and orchestration.

There are two major aspects to Vantage Cloud Port:
    1. Vantage workflow design and orchestration
    2. Cloud-enabled actions

Workflows are built with the Vantage Workflow Designer and run by the Vantage orchestration engine. Vantage users own their workflows and determine where the orchestration engine runs and who has access. Adding Vantage Cloud Port does not change this operating model.

Vantage Cloud Port enables actions placed in a cloud-mode to run within Vantage workflows—providing the same outcomes as infrastructure-based Vantage actions but with a consumption-based operating (and pricing) model.

Whenever a Vantage action is cloud-enabled via Vantage Cloud Port, a Telestream Cloud icon is added to the action within the Vantage workflow (see example diagram), and operators are presented with a cost to run a Vantage Cloud Port action at the time of configuration.

And while a Telestream Cloud account is required to be able to leverage Vantage Cloud Port, all of the workflow design and orchestration happens within the Vantage Media Processing Platform. Vantage Cloud Port users reference their Telestream Cloud console for information about minutes used and billing totals for their cloud-enabled actions.

Actions that can be cloud-enabled with Vantage Cloud Port include:

  • IPTV Flip
  • Multiscreen Flip
  • Flip64
  • Timed Text Flip
  • Analysis

Vantage Cloud Port is Location and Resource-aware

VCP Workflow

Workflows with cloud-enabled actions (via Vantage Cloud Port) can have a characteristic where “workflows follow the media.” This is accomplished by designing workflows with Decide actions and a new location action to conditionally route files. If media lives in the cloud, Vantage Cloud Port actions can process it there. When necessary, Vantage Cloud Port actions can automatically move media to the cloud, which is most efficient when media is headed for cloud storage anyway. Workflows can be set up to make decisions on whether to process “on-prem” or in the cloud. Being “storage-aware” means Vantage workflows with Vantage Cloud Port actions are seamless across storage locations. Furthermore, Vantage Cloud Port actions can be switched from local to SaaS mode to expand capacity and to respond to resource demands.

With Vantage Cloud Port, operators can manually configure existing actions for SaaS mode or dynamically scale out the necessary processing resources as close to the content as possible. For example, Vantage Cloud Port actions can burst to SaaS mode automatically when system load reaches a predetermined threshold. Workflows would be manually configured to do this using a new Utilization action to produce variables, and Decide actions to act upon the variables.

Business Benefits

  • Leverage existing Vantage workflow efforts
    Many hours are spent programming Vantage workflows to solve problems - with Vantage Cloud Port you don’t need to recreate them
  • No on-boarding expense or redesign
    Workflows are executed right from Vantage, they aren’t sent anywhere
  • 100% OPEX predictable SaaS pricing
    Vantage Cloud Port is billed based on output content minutes
    It has a simple, deterministic pricing approach
  • Instant pricing feedback
    Optional display of per-minute processing price in Vantage
  • Access to unlicensed Vantage features
    Any cloud-capable actions and features can be used
  • Single vendor, multi-cloud
    SaaS model means one bill to pay for execution, compute, and management
    Telestream Cloud deploys compute in whichever cloud provider hosts the media
  • Detailed cost reporting for assigning costs
    Cloud console can generate usage reports based on workload for any time period

Operational Benefits

  • Single management platform
    Vantage is now a unified tool for managing on-prem and cloud processing
    Get a consolidated status view, history and reporting
  • Familiar Vantage logic for cloud usage control
    New “Location” and “Utilization” actions provide variables allowing Decide actions to determine processing location according to individual needs
  • Integrated, efficient, media transfer
    Secure, encrypted, multi-thread HTTP download and upload when media transfer is necessary
  • Central usage of multiple Clouds
    Vantage Cloud Port can interact natively with buckets in many regions across AWS, Google, and Azure
    Egress charges are avoided by processing media in-region and only downloading when so configured
  • Rich supplementary interface for cloud status,analytics, and reporting
    Telestream Cloud UI provides additional status views for cloud jobs
    Simple analytics tools can report by workflow, action, and time period

As a Vantage Customer, you'll want it because...

Vantage Cloud Port couples the power of Vantage with the simplicity of SaaS. New advanced workflows can leverage cloud processing without any onboarding. To take advantage of Vantage Cloud Port, you simply install Vantage 8.0 and you can begin to augment your on-premise processing.

 

Pricing

Please contact your Telestream Representative.