Google Cloud Next ’19: building a next-generation streaming platform with Sky

At Google Cloud Next ’19, I had the pleasure to co-present with Melika Golkaram of Google and Moore Macauley from Harmonic on “Building a next generation streaming platform with Sky”.

Sky live-sports streaming slide on screen at Google Cloud Next ’19. — Conference auditorium during the Google Cloud Next ’19 session: the on-screen Sky slide for Embracing the Cloud for Live Sports Streaming, with a Google Cloud podium and audience in the foreground.

Google Cloud Next ’19 speaker badge. — My speaker badge from Google Cloud Next ’19.

Melika described streaming as a new industry and reflected on how YouTube had changed viewing habits since its launch in 2005. She cited the figure of one billion hours of content watched each day at the time, and discussed how Google was investing to meet media companies’ needs.

I explained the technical and business benefits of moving live sports workloads to the cloud and introduced our Software Defined Streaming platform, designed for highly available live streaming. We called this concept the Single Channel Fault Domain: a synchronised live channel across two data centres, with the system able to self-heal without affecting customer viewing.

Moore explained how Harmonic collaborated with Sky and Google to solve several engineering challenges, then demonstrated a live channel running in Google Cloud.

Session recording on YouTube (external)

17th April Update: Slides are now available.

Slides (PDF, 12.91 MB)