Avid Unveils Cloud Strategy with Launch of New Offerings

Avid® (Nasdaq: AVID) , a leading global media technology provider for the creation, distribution, and monetization of media assets for global media organizations, enterprise users, and individual creative professionals, today announced new cloud innovations for the Avid MediaCentral® Platform and its comprehensive suite of industry-leading tools and workflow solutions.  The breakthrough advancements herald the greatest expansion of Avid Everywhere™ since its launch nearly four years ago. The Avid MediaCentral Platform is now cloud-enabled, and can be deployed on premises, in a private data center, or the public cloud, providing everyone in the media industry with the ability to create, distribute, and manage content more efficiently and profitably using one common platform. The move also enables several of the company’s comprehensive set of creative tools and workflow solutions to be deployed in the cloud along with the Avid MediaCentral Platform. 
“The media industry is going through unprecedented change, with more content being created than ever before,” said Louis Hernandez Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avid. “With staggering increases in content consumption and exponential growth in distribution platforms, technology budgets have not kept pace, creating relentless pressure for operational efficiency. To help media organizations meet these challenges head on, we’re extending the Avid MediaCentral Platform and many of our industry-leading tools into the cloud, giving our clients more agility, flexibility, and efficiencies as their business needs evolve.”

Mr. Hernandez, Jr. continued, “We’ve designed our cloud offerings to be complementary to what our clients may already have deployed on premises today—allowing them to just add cloud-deployed tools, workflows and services as they need them, leveraging the investment they’ve already made. We believe the cloud will usher in an exciting new era for the media industry, opening up new operational possibilities and strategic business opportunities. And with Avid, our clients can begin this journey to the cloud in their own way and at their own pace.”

Together with a newly announced cloud alliance with Microsoft, Avid is leading the media industry’s ability to handle full-scale media production in the cloud. By extending the Avid MediaCentral Platform to the cloud on Microsoft Azure, media organizations now have the complete flexibility to create, distribute, and monetize their content using the deployment type that works best for them. Regardless of their deployment model—on premises, private data center, public cloud, or hybrid—media organizations of every type and size will have the same user experience, workflow power, speed, efficiency, and collaboration capabilities they’ve come to rely on from Avid. Further, existing MediaCentral customers now have an easy on-ramp to the cloud, leveraging the investment they’ve already made. 

“Avid really changed the game with Avid Everywhere, showing the industry what the possibilities could be with a comprehensive media platform,” said Mohamed Abuagla, CTO and CIO of Al Jazeera Media Network. “We are delighted to be collaborating with Avid on the first hybrid cloud implementation of the MediaCentral platform across our international newsroom network. We will be pioneering cloud-based newsroom workflows with the goal to create a connected, open, global newsroom environment. As we move into a cloud-based future, we are pleased to have Avid at our side to help us navigate this important journey.”