Break Out the Buggy Whips. Is Now the Tipping Point for Streaming Video? - Tony Greenberg - MediaBizBloggers

Who39s in the buggy whip business in technology these days By that I mean what companies are about to become obsolete thanks to major shifts in media delivery and consumption caused by the rise the serious rise of streamingamp160More than a dozen years after the launch of the Streaming Media conference which is now filled with dozens of contentmanagement systems and practically no CDNs content distribution networks the show is creeping back to success showing its best growth numbers in years Meanwhile the CDN business is still a rugdealer39s market facing a death spiral toward free with individual vendors providing widely varying price quality and value Thankfully there39s still a market Disclosure my firm RampRate mediates deals in this spaceSomehow the CDNs continue to develop new tech to stay in business but I have to think they39ll eventually bow to Google and Microsoft the only firms with enough scale to survive in the long term That said there39s more happening in streaming than in a long time with more mainstream content and more kinds of devices that can access itMy partner David Bloom has just published a piece in TheWrapcom listing some of his top candidates for Industries Soon To Be No Longer Needed He writes quotWhat39s it all mean To start I39d sell off that opticaldisc duping factory if I were you And you may want to get out of the harddrive and home networkedstorage businesses too They39re on the way to buggywhip status and fastquotJust to top it off he throws in the makers of shelving for all the DVDs CDs books and more that we soon won39t be collecting to show visitors how cool our tastes are Now we39ll have to do that by sharing our culture preferences online with friends through programs such as GetGlue and Apple39s Ping well maybeWhy are all these industries suddenly endangered David rightly says it39ll be a while before things completely shake out of course but a series of recent announcements and developments are accelerating the longbubbling transition to streaming for much of content that we consumequotThe resulting shifts likely will change the kinds of entertainment we consume it will be a while before that shakes out I think but those shifts definitely are already beginning to change the way we consume them quotBig companies such as Apple Google and consumer electronics makers have made a series of recent announcements that will make it easier than ever to get brandname content for a cheap price stream it smoothly and at high quality on all kinds of devices and platforms and not worry about keeping it on hand on some vast hard drive forever afterMark Suster of GRP Ventures smartly asserts Hulu is the OPEC of the Online Industry though I wonder if they soon become yesterday39s fish wrapper as Skype becomes en vogue as their founders return to shake it up Reversal of FortuneThere are some caveatsFor instance at least some people will need local hard drives and optical drives for the stuff they already have like the CDs and DVDs they already own and the personal stuff they39re now creating by the boatloadsWill big content creators actually free up their good programming enough to avoid what I39ll call Chronic Consumer Frustration a condition that drives techsavvy audiences back to the latest illegal tools to access all that lockedaway contentAs an example Look at the broadcast networks39 ban of their content from the muchballyhooed Google TV service That uniform opposition means Google TV users will only see some basic cable networks among the online offerings of the service It doesn39t mean users won39t get that programming somewhere else and Google TV39s Internet access and search capabilities may make it easy to findOver at iTunes only DisneyABC and Fox are selling their TV shows at 99 cents a pop That doesn39t mean people aren39t watching shows from CBS and NBC et al They39re just going to get it in other waysBut I digress For tech companies the string of recent announcements and developments show that cloud computing is rapidly becoming mainstream undergirding the business plans and major new offerings of some of the biggest companies in media and entertainment As David says quotIt39s kinda already herequotquotamp8230we39re seeing significant changes in distribution through mainstream devices for mainstream audiences involving lowcost content that people won39t own and won39t store on their own machines but can access nearly anywhere on a wide variety of devices from cell phones to TVs to computers quotThe only question for you to consider is whether you39re suddenly in the buggy whip business or transforming your company to leverage the opportunities that are quickly presenting themselves So are you moving forward or looking backTony Greenberg is the chairman of RampRate an IT Sourcing Advisory purchasing billions in cloud services data centers telecom and IT Outsourcing for firms like Microsoft Sony Newscorp Hearst and dozens of emerging startups making matches between firms that need some really cold space massive computing power and near infinite bandwidth and companies that can do so reliably cheaply and effectively Tony can be reached at tonygreenbergrampratecomRead all Tony39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Only Time Buys Trust MediaBizBloggersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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