Sony announces Media Cloud Services subsidiary

Sony Corporation of America has announced the launch of Sony Media Cloud Services, a new subsidiary that will give creative professionals a virtual workspace with media applications to store, share and manipulate content from any location in the world.

Leveraging Sony’s end-to-end expertise across the media landscape, the new company’s robust, scalable cloud platform, CiSM (pronounced see), will provide studios, broadcasters, independent producers, marketing teams and other creative individuals with a “one-cloud” solution to collect, produce and archive high-value, high-definition content, allowing fast and secure collaboration on a global scale.

Naomi Climer, president of Sony Media Cloud Services, comments: “Every day, creative professionals around the world spend numerous hours and resources on non-creative tasks like moving and sharing content, figuring out how and where to store it, and getting the right assets to the right places and in the right hands. Sony understands these complex challenges, which is why we designed Ci as a functionally rich, scalable and secure, media-focused cloud platform that can enhance and streamline traditional production workflows to make it easier to collaborate more effectively and cost-efficiently.”

Chris Cookson, president of Sony Pictures Technologies, adds: “The efficiency and flexibility that cloud solutions provide will radically change the way creative professionals collaborate. Working with Sony’s Cloud Services team to further enhance Ci’s platform and applications will enable our production and distribution teams around the world to work together more efficiently, without sacrificing creativity or quality.”

Applications available at launch include:

•             Ci MediaBox: Collects, organises, previews, shares and archives every media type and size using studio-designed cloud storage solution suite

•             Ci VideoLog: Enables logging of frame-accurate events to prepare content for downstream opportunities, distribution and playout automation

•             Ci AudioSync: Utilises analysis algorithms and audio pattern matching to reduce non-creative editing work time in content-preparation workflows

•             Ci FrameMatch: Analyses media files to automatically identify differences and likenesses between two sets of video files

•             Ci ReviewApprove: Enables review, annotation and collaboration on media files across multiple locations in real time, simultaneously

Ci is currently in beta production and will be on display next week at the 2013 NAB Show in the Sony booth. Ci is available within the US and European markets, with plans for additional service capabilities to be launched within the year.