NAB Show 2013 – That’s a Wrap!

With NAB Show 2013 wrapping up today, we wanted to pause and reflect on some of the key themes we saw in the Microsoft booth.

As expected, cloud was a hot topic at the show. While in 2012, media companies were busy kicking the tires of cloud technologies to gauge how they might be able to move some of their workflows, this year saw a shift to more actionable discussions with existing & new customers. Tuesday’s announcement with NBC to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms generated a ton of buzz within the booth. As a result, the Windows Azure demo station was standing-room only for four straight days.

Another major theme of the show was measurement and big data. A common pain point we hear from media companies is that the vast amount of data they possess is only accessible by a few “data folks” within the organization. We’re working to democratize data across organizations and give subject matter experts the ability to glean important insights from internal and external data using ubiquitous tools like Microsoft Excel.

This is an incredibly exciting time for the media industry. Technology advancements like Windows Azure Media Services are making it possible for media companies to focus on their most important assets, their content and their customers. At the same time, entire digital workflows can be managed in the cloud with the ability to scale up or down seamlessly and pay only for what’s used.

We’re looking forward to the future and to sharing more exciting announcements with you later this year.