The Changing Face (和 Price) of the On-Prem Video Encoder

五年前 when you purchased an on-prem encoder, it came with its own computer. 今天, as more companies invest in general-purpose internal computing in one form or another, 这种情况已经改变了. 所以与其买一盒, you buy software to install in your internal cloud or container-based computing platform.

还有许多其他. Bitmovin的 on-prem offering includes “a managed on-premises encoding service on Kubernetes 和 Docker that works for VoD 和 Live 和 offers the same features as our cloud encoding.“你可以部署编码.com的 HybridCloud solution “on a variety [of] virtualization platforms (OpenStack, VMware, Joyent), 存储配置(SMB), 斯威夫特, S3, NFS), 以及网络配置.” 谐波的 Electra XVM “is the first product to leverage the broad capabilities of the Harmonic VOS platform 和 architecture.

Deploying encoders on internal clouds or container clusters makes a lot of sense, as you can very cheaply process your day-to-day encodes on hardware that you already own 和 easily send any spikes in production out to the cloud.

What’s fascinating is how the merger of internal 和 cloud encoding is changing the pricing model for on-prem encoding software. 五年前, when you bought that hardware encoder (or software encoder to install on a single computer), you paid a hefty sum for the privilege 和 the encoder ran on that single computer. Computer-based pricing clearly doesn’t work when you’re installing the software on multiple CPUs for part-time usage that changes from day to day.

什么是有效的? You have to look to the cloud, though pricing there is also in flux. 五年前, 视频点播的定价是按分钟或GB计算的, 实时转码并不存在. 如今，这种固定定价模式正在发生变化. 例如，编码.com现在提供保留云定价, where you pay a fixed monthly cost for a cloud instance that you can run at capacity 和 pump as much encoding through as possible. For customers operating at near full capacity, this is much cheaper than paying by the GB. Hybrik entered the market in 2016 with stepped pricing based on the number of cloud instances that can run simultaneously. You pay them for access to the software, 和 pay your own hardware costs.

在直播方面，一些服务，比如微软Azure 和 Zencoder 还是按输出小时收费吗, a model that Wowza Streaming Cloud undercuts with a $500/month plan, 包括云硬件的成本. 或者你可以买 Wowza Streaming Engine for $1,995, or license it for as low as $65/month 和 pay your own hardware costs. Softvelum的 Nimble Streamer charges about $80/month for its Transcoder (including all other costs), 你还要支付硬件成本. These Wowza/Nimble Streamer alternatives are all much cheaper than paying by the hour.

Running on your own hardware should always be cheaper than encoding via a SaaS or PaaS cloud. As the prices for live 和 VOD cloud alternatives continue to drop, so should the cost of software that you run on your own hardware. Keep this in mind when negotiating pricing for any software you can use internally.

Is the new breed of on-prem software right for you? 只看经济方面, internal processing should be cheaper than a SaaS/ PaaS cloud, 尽管差距正在缩小. 就在两三年前, cloud encoding companies were making obscene margins, making it tough to justify a purely economic decision to encode in the cloud, 至少对于视频点播来说是这样. 今天, with new pricing models squeezing all competitors, 在云端进行编码确实是负担得起的, narrowing the cost savings of encoding internally.

The bottom line is that you should consider encoding internally, 以及探索所有的云替代方案. There’s gold in them thar hills in the form of significant cost savings; you just need to find it.

[This article appears in the September 2017 issue of 流媒体杂志 作为“On-Prem编码器的变化面孔”."]