Broadcast industry vendors discuss the shift toward hybrid cloud workflows for live production, highlighting the balance between elastic cloud-based graphics and latency-sensitive edge acquisition. The roundtable emphasizes the necessity of redundant IP-based infrastructure and centralized monitoring to maintain reliability in distributed production environments.
The shift toward distributed workflows allows broadcasters to decouple expertise from geography, enabling a single graphics team to support global events without relocating. This transition forces a move away from monolithic signal paths toward modular, IP-based architectures that use tools like Prometheus and Grafana for end-to-end observability. As the industry matures, the competitive advantage will shift to organizations that can reuse these configurations across multiple rights partners and platforms without rebuilding infrastructure. Watch for the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest results to serve as a benchmark for large-scale SRT-based cloud distribution to dozens of public recipients.
The hybrid cloud live production trend highlighted in this roundtable is accelerating across major broadcast vendors. In May 2026, Bitmovin's annual Video Developer Report found that 28 per cent of respondents plan to use Media over QUIC in the next 12 months, driven by the need for more efficient video delivery in latency-sensitive scenarios such as live sports and interactive formats. That same report noted AI has moved from add-on feature to full-stack deployment, with 98 per cent of 486 respondents using AI or ML for video workflows. The convergence of low-latency protocol adoption and AI-driven automation is precisely the environment in which hybrid cloud production architectures gain traction, since distributed workflows require both efficient transport and intelligent orchestration.
On the business side, Bitmovin announced in May 2026 that MUBI selected its VOD Encoder to replace a legacy on-premises encoding stack, migrating to a managed cloud service supporting 3-pass encoding, UHD, and a multi-codec strategy spanning AVC, HEVC, and AV1. While MUBI's deal is VOD-focused rather than live, it illustrates the broader pattern of content companies decommissioning on-premises infrastructure in favor of cloud-native services, the same migration path that live production operators are now pursuing for graphics, distribution, and monitoring layers. The procurement model matters too: MUBI signed through AWS Marketplace, signaling that marketplace-based procurement is becoming standard for broadcast-grade cloud services.
From a technical standpoint, the codec and transport decisions facing live production teams are becoming more complex. Streaming Media's State of Streaming Codecs 2026 report covered emerging IP-centric licensing models from startups like Deep Render, which could affect how broadcasters budget for codec deployment in distributed architectures. Meanwhile, an independent comparison of Bitmovin and Mux noted that Bitmovin has multi-year production AV1 deployments and supports VVC, capabilities that matter for broadcasters planning multi-codec strategies across hybrid cloud and edge environments. For live production specifically, the choice between SRT-based contribution and SMPTE ST 2110 IP production remains the central architectural decision, with the roundtable's emphasis on redundant paths and centralized monitoring reflecting the operational reality that neither pure-cloud nor pure-on-prem approaches alone can meet broadcast-grade reliability requirements.
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