Avid, Microsoft Enter Strategic Cloud Alliance for Media and Entertainment Industry

Avid, a top media technology provider responsible for the creation and distribution of content for media organizations recently announced that they have entered into a strategic cloud alliance with Microsoft for the entertainment industry.

The duo plans to work together to produce and market cloud-based tools and cloud services for the media and entertainment space. Avid chose Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud hosting platform, according to a release, and has plans to create a variety of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings that will be powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

“With a cloud-based offering built on Avid’s portfolio of the industry’s best and most comprehensive creative tools and media workflow solutions, the strategic cloud alliance will enable media organizations and creative professionals to quickly and easily leverage the efficiencies, flexibility and agility that the cloud enables—made possible by Avid’s flexible approach to licensing, deployment and commercial options,” the release reported.

It went on to say that the cloud will also allow companies to become forward-thinking when it comes to new media workflows, operational capabilities and new business opportunities. Avid’s hosting and services offering will be based on Microsoft Azure only.

The partnership is a “multi-year strategic agreement in which both companies will make significant mutual commitments and investments in technology, product development and go-to-market efforts.”

And Microsoft will invest resources to decrease the time-to-market for targeted cloud-based solutions and specific Azure-based cloud tools for the entertainment market. And Avid will provide Microsoft Azure hosting and media services exclusively as a key element to its cloud-based solutions and cloud services. The pair will also work together in creating a market approach to help customers migrate to the cloud with ease.

“We at Avid are very pleased to be entering into this strategic cloud alliance with Microsoft, and believe this will be big for the industry, and even bigger for our clients. The combination of these two strong technology innovators will set the pace for the industry,” Avid Chairman and CEO Louis Hernandez, Jr. said in a release. “The depth and breadth of this technical and commercial collaboration will drive significant value for our mutual clients and help them successfully navigate their own journey to the cloud.”

Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Group at Microsoft Corp., Scott Guthrie added, “With the industry’s preeminent global community of media enterprises and creative professionals that make up Avid’s client base, the company’s unique platform approach and its extensive domain knowledge, combined with our own powerful Azure cloud platform, we believe that this unique alliance is well-positioned to lead the media industry into the cloud. Microsoft is pleased to collaborate with such a market leader in media and entertainment, and feel strongly that together our companies will produce something powerful for the industry—creating an intelligent, media-savvy cloud solution.”

The duo is expected to deliver a continuous stream of hosting and services over the next year and a half and the first set of offerings should be released during the second part of the year.