Mark Kelly, Scripps Networks | AWS re:Invent 2017
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2017-11-30

Mark Kelly, Director of Cloud and Infrastructure Services Architecture, Scripps Networks | AWS re:Invent 2017

#reInvent #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2018/01/02/hgtv-parent-company-skips-intermissions-with-agile-cloud-reinvent/

HGTV parent company skips intermissions with agile cloud

"Cord-cutting” has disrupted old-school TV-show-viewing means and machines, making audiences a tougher target for programmers to pin down. Born and bred in broadcast, Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. is chasing them on and off the tube with agile cloud computing.

“The whole consumption method for all of our end users is changing,” said Mark Kelly (pictured), director of cloud and infrastructure architecture at Scripps Networks Interactive.

Viewers of Scripps’ several networks — including HGTV and The Travel Channel — are tuning in on smart phones, tablets and laptops. Scripps is available on set-top boxes, Apple TV and Roku streaming media player, and it’s developing networks specifically for those technologies. Revenue structures for these new delivery models are still uncertain, however, so broadcast remains Scripps’ bread and butter, according to Kelly.

Kelly spoke to Stu Miniman (@stu) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.)

Scripps skips the break
Scripps wanted to mimic startup-style speed and innovation in its broadcasting legacies, which naturally led it to cloud infrastructure. The processes, controls and budgeting concerns of a large enterprise like Scripps can generally halt any abrupt movement, according to Kelly. Lead times for hardware purchases, hardware management issues, and obtaining software licenses can mean long layovers between ideas and action. Moving workloads to cloud has taken much of that out of the picture. Stakeholders love it, because it demands less up-front expense and allows products to go to market much faster, Kelly explained.

Scripps runs more than 3,000 instances in the Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud. It monitors its stacks from development to production with a single New Relic Inc. solution. “We try not to separate our monitoring; we try to keep it all uniform, so our troubleshooting gets a lot simpler,” Kelly said.

Scripps is looking into machine learning tools, such as AWS Kinesis Video Streams to perform time-consuming video analysis people have typically done. “It’s just somebody sitting there watching it for hours and hours a day,” Kelly stated.

Hyper-agile serverless computing is also a favored new horizon for Scripps’ development teams. Monitoring serverless functions has been tricky, but the teams are making progress, Kelly concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: New Relic Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither New Relic nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)