By now, we all can see that the Internet will become the dominant media distribution platform. We can easily imagine (and expect) that all content will be digitized and distributed online. Every song, every movie, every video game, every software program, every live television event, every business document and more will be instantly searchable and retrievable via a range of connected devices. It will all be magically available to stream or download on-demand through "the Cloud".
This was the dream when I started my first Internet business in 1995. Now, people think it is the reality. And, while we are making great progress towards such a future, unfortunately, we are not there yet. The demand for online media consumption is simply too great and is growing even faster than we can deploy cloud services to meet it.
Because "the Cloud" is on-demand infrastructure that enables many businesses to scale without having to provision hardware, many people believe the Cloud is infinitely elastic. The cloud concept has become so familiar so quickly that it is commonplace to now hear "Just upload it to the Cloud" or "Just download it from the Cloud", as if it’s truly ubiquitous or that easy-to-use.
The Cloud may be elastic enough to meet certain needs, but it’s far from being ready to meet consumer media demand. Some examples during the month of November illustrate this point, such as last week’s stream of the Republican candidates’ debate on CBSNews.com, during which people were denied online access to the second half of the debate because of bandwidth limitations. The free-to-play release of DC Universe Online by Sony Online Entertainment is another example; that release overwhelmed the game servers, and the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 caused the Activision gamer social network, Call of Duty Elite, to crash. The common theme of all of these situations is summed up by an Activision executive: "We knew there would be a tremendous amount of traffic. It was a lot more than we anticipated".
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