Elly Yates-Roberts |
A new five-year partnership between Microsoft and The Walt Disney Studios will see the firms develop new cloud-based workflows for creating, producing and distributing content on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Through The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, a technology hub designed to create and advance the future of storytelling, the companies aim to accelerate innovation in production and postproduction.
“The cloud has reached a tipping point for the media industry, and it’s not surprising that The Walt Disney Studios, which has its heritage based on a passion for innovation and technology, is at the forefront of this transformation,” said Kate Johnson, president of Microsoft US. “The combination of Azure’s hyperscale capacity, global distribution, and industry-leading storage and networking capabilities with Disney’s strong history of industry leadership unlocks new opportunity in the media and entertainment space and will power new ways to drive content and creativity at scale.
“With Azure as the platform cloud for content, we’re excited to work with the team at StudioLAB to continue to drive innovation across Disney’s broad portfolio of studios.”
Working with media technology provider Avid, Microsoft and Disney are already demonstrating that high-performance media and entertainment workflows can be deployed and operated securely in the cloud, while unlocking substantial new benefits and efficiencies. For example, their collaborative editing, content archiving and active back-up solutions such as the Avid MediaCentral platform, Cloud UX, and Avid Media Composer are helping transform content creation and management.
“By moving many of our production and postproduction workflows to the cloud, we’re optimistic that we can create content more quickly and efficiently around the world,” said Jamie Voris, chief technology officer at The Walt Disney Studios. “Through this innovation partnership with Microsoft, we’re able to streamline many of our processes so our talented filmmakers can focus on what they do best.”