# Transitioning Broadcast to Cloud
## 5 Scale and Performance of Cloud-Based Media Delivery Systems  
In this section, we present a set of field results demonstrating scalability and performance of today's cloud-based OTT media delivery systems. As examples, we will take data observed for several randomly chosen media distributors using the Brightcove OVP system [90]. The data were captured during the period of 19 December-22 December 2020. First, in Figure 12 we show the numbers of concurrent live streaming encoders run by different users of cloud-based OVP. Such numbers can be very different, from single encoders/channels for some users, to several hundreds for others. The overall number of live transcoders run by this set of users of OVP was close to 1000. This compares well to typical numbers of channels supported in today's broadcast systems. Figure 12 also shows that the numbers of concurrent live encoders in cloud-based system may change over time. There were periods when the system scaled them up, and there were periods when it scaled them down. Such fluctuations generally related to either creation of new or termination of existing live streaming events, or management of redundant streams or management of a pool of \"available\" encoders that were instantiated speculatively to enable new streams to be launched and streamed right away, without any additional delays. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Characteristic/Components**} & **On Prem Solution** & **Architecture 1 (Section 4.1)** & **Architecture 2 (Section 4.2)** & **Architecture 3 (Section 4.3)** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Ingest from remote and \\ field production \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Playout \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Broadcast distribution \\ transcoding \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Broadcast multiplexers \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} QAMs \\ Amplitude Modulation \\ and links to distribution \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{5-5}  & & & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} OTT transcoding \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} OTT packing, DRM, and \\ SSAI \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} OTT origin servers \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} Fault-tolerance and \\ redundancy support \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{On prem} & \multirow{2}{*}{\
\begin{tabular}{c} On prem for \\ broadcast \\ chain, cloud \\ for OTT \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} & \multirow{2}{*}{Cloud} \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} \% of physical equipment \\ required \\ \end{tabular} } & \multirow{2}{*}{100\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{50–75\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{25–50\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{10–20\%} \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Comparison of proposed architectures. Figure 12: The numbers of concurrent live encoders run by different users of cloud-based OVP. The dynamics of creation of new live streams in this system are further illustrated in Figure 13. Here, we also observed high variation.