Digital Directions: A Clear Forecast 
About the Cloud

The Cloud's Impact on 
Publishing

Cloud computing impacts us in two fundamental ways: how we create and deliver digital offerings.

Pre-cloud, when a publisher wanted to get serious about digital media creation, they went shopping. First up was a digital asset management (DAM) system to store and manage digital content. This often was an expensive piece of kit, requiring a lengthy implementation. Next was a workflow system to support the publishing process. And let's not forget the provisioning of big disk storage resources for all of that digital media. All these components introduced big costs—purchase of hardware/software, and implementation and support costs.

This is changing. DAM and workflow solutions increasingly are being offered as hosted, cloud-based services. Networked data-storage services have been commoditized. Customization still is required to fit your organization's needs, but far less than a traditional implementation phase—and no hardware/software purchase is required, and little in terms of support costs.

Contrarians among us may bristle at the notion of managing digital content on third-party services. Security, control and service levels, of course, are of the utmost importance. Having said that, if we can manage CRM data in the cloud and feel comfortable with online banking, why can't we do the same with content?

Delivering Content in the Cloud

Digital delivery also will be cloud-based. In fact, it already is: For example, Amazon's Kindle Store is a cloud service that manages content (e-books), performs transactions and has all the other services necessary to make an e-book marketplace tick. It would be cost-prohibitive for a publisher to attempt to create equivalent functionality on its own website. The Kindle Store represents not just a place to download media, but an entire e-book ecosystem capable of managing the delivery and use of a single e-book purchase across multiple devices in use by the consumer.