MTV Networks rocks the cloud with open APIs

Today, MTV Networks is announcing that it’s expanding the delivery of video feeds and opening its APIs to consumers and partners via cloud computing — interesting possibilities. The network has come a long way since the days of Nina Blackwood and Mark Goodman, to be sure, but what exactly is it looking to gain? Ostensibly, reliability and scalability. To help in this endeavor MTV Networks has selected Sonoa’s ServiceNet. It’s deploying ServiceNet between its various service providers and consumers to manage its service policies. Using Sonoa’s dual-plane architecture, which separates data processing from control tasks, the service policies will be seamlessly applied at network speed. In theory, this provides high concurrency with extremely low latency. Real deal? Good plan for MTV?

Gartner says yes. Frank Kenney, Research Director for Applications Strategy and Governance at Gartner, opined that “MTV Networks is a great example of how industry leaders are leveraging the cloud to innovate distribution models and consumer experiences.” While I can see how industry leaders would want to innovate with regard to distribution and consumer experience, I wouldn’t have counted MTV amongst the “industry leaders.” I also talked to Andrew Toy, MTV’s VP of Mobile and Syndication Technology, who was nice enough to answer a couple of my questions.

whurley: How serious is MTV about leveraging cloud computing?

Andrew Toy: MTVN is very interested in exploring the use of cloud computing to help us deliver our digital experiences to as wide a range of audiences as possible while at the same time keeping tight control of our infrastructure and costs.

whurley: What benefits does MTV hope to see from utilizing cloud computing?

Andrew Toy: Cloud computing brings out that opportunity to scale our infrastructure and product in an extremely flexible fashion, which enables us to provide a level of agility and functionality to the business that we have not been able to do using traditional methods.

whurley: What is the vision for MTV’s cloud computing infrastructure over the next five years?

Andrew Toy: By leveraging a hybrid strategy, which combines the security of traditional infrastructure with flexibility and scalability of distributed cloud, MTVN feels it will be able to provide best-of-breed content distribution services to both its consumers and distribution partners.

I also asked him for API and consumer participation details, but they’re not ready to share those yet. Still pretty company line at this point, but it sure seems like MTV intends to take full advantage of cloud computing to become a more open company through new APIs and cloud-based services for both partners and consumers. It’s good to see an established company, especially a media outlet, out front like this. I, for one, can’t wait to take a look at the APIs and the results. What do you think?