Sky without borders: how cloud and IP are transforming a broadcasting giant | Executive interviews

Before joining Sky, Cristina Gomila held various positions at Technicolor, eventually becoming their CTO. She was deeply involved in areas such as film production, post-production and VFX, gaining experience that now reflects her current role as Managing Director of Content Technology and Innovation. Five years ago, Sky approached Gomila with an ambitious vision. “Sky explained to me the enormous challenge of transforming a traditional broadcast distribution environment into a modern media company,” she recalls. “That was a great challenge – I couldn’t say no.”

Gomila took on the task of effecting a massive technological overhaul. This shift also required a transformation of teams and workflows across the organization. “We have fully embraced cloud, data and AI and started a massive transformation of the teams and the way they work,” she says. Today, Cristina’s role includes not only overseeing this digital transformation, but also ensuring that these technologies improve customer experience, operational resilience and sustainability.

Transforming a broadcasting giant like Sky is no easy feat, and Gomila believes in a long-term approach to such a shift. “Every year something new happens in this industry that challenges us further,” she says. “At the same time, five years is short, but long enough to start proving its value.”

Sky began its transition to IP with the implementation of a 2022-2026 network. “It brought some challenges,” she says. “Especially when we went to UHD and very large formats.” That’s why the decision was made to move to SMPTE 2110. “We are currently reviewing our entire routing infrastructure,” she adds. “It is a challenging process. You must have a well-made plan, because the investment is large. We took a phased approach, starting by replacing the contribution signal processing. In the future, our ambition would be to one day have all production control rooms IP-based.”

Benefits and challenges of IP migration

For Sky, the IP migration has delivered several benefits, especially in the areas of scalability, flexibility and support for remote production. “IP offers a broadening capability, especially valuable as sports fit and volumes grow,” Gomila notes. IP allows Sky to manage the enormous resource demands associated with major live events, such as sports broadcasts, more efficiently than ever before. This scalability has allowed Sky to introduce new content and interactive features previously limited by the physical limitations of SDI.

Remote production is another important advantage of IP. Using IP, Sky’s teams can produce, edit and manage content from multiple locations, creating a decentralized production model that is highly customizable. This capability has been crucial for Sky’s sports broadcasting, where remote production enables a seamless experience despite logistical challenges. “The way IP allows content to be produced, edited and managed from multiple locations is a huge advantage,” Gomila adds.

However, the transition to intellectual property brings its own challenges. Upskilling and training were essential to bridge the knowledge gap between SDI and IP technologies. “These are very different skills, from SDI to IP,” she explains, emphasizing the importance of equipping Sky technicians with the necessary tools and training. Careful planning was necessary to avoid disrupting ongoing activities. “Don’t go for the maximum or there is a risk of downtime because you are performing a very critical migration with real-time equipment on site,” she says.

Software-based orchestration has been a key enabler in Sky’s cloud transformation, enabling continuous integration, security and disaster recovery within a virtual environment. By redesigning workflows to align with cloud infrastructure, Sky has achieved greater flexibility and resilience, transforming traditional manufacturing models to fully realize the potential of the cloud. Cristina emphasizes the importance of orchestrating cloud-based systems with a software-first approach, explaining: “We have CICD deployment pipelines and active-active disaster recovery, which means I don’t have to keep cold rooms ready to start up.”

Sky’s hybrid approach

The adoption of cloud technologies has been a cornerstone of Sky’s transformation. “Over the last five years, but I would say probably accelerated over the last three years, we have made significant progress in embracing the cloud,” Gomila says. “We have Cloud across the entire content supply chain. We use it for storage and archiving, live production, channel playout, platform distribution and delivery.” Sky adopts a ‘Cloud-first’ mentality, but recognizes the need for a hybrid approach. Gomila explains: “If you embrace Cloud, you have to be flexible. Hybrid will probably be the best solution. Embracing the cloud doesn’t mean everything has to be done on the cloud. You have to migrate to the cloud, which makes sense – because of the volumes, the challenges, the investments. That said, we have a ‘Cloud-source mentality’: if it works on Cloud, we migrate to Cloud,” she says.

Sky’s hybrid Cloud model enables the flexibility to meet different levels of demand, especially during high-profile events such as major sports broadcasts, where rapid increases in resources are often required. By combining public and private cloud resources, Sky can achieve optimal cost efficiency while maintaining the scalability needed for large-scale live events.

Consequences for the entire organization

The migration to the cloud has also necessitated a shift from a capital expenditure model (capex), where investments are made in physical infrastructure, to an operational expenditure model (opex), where resources are paid for as needed. This shift requires a rethink of budgeting and resource allocation strategies across the organization. “Broadcast has always seen investment in hardware, but with Cloud this becomes a recurring operational cost,” Gomila notes, recognizing that this change requires a partnership between Sky’s finance, engineering and business teams.

Gomila emphasizes the importance of financial operations (FinOps) in effectively managing cloud costs, noting that a strong financial framework is crucial for maintaining cost efficiency in a cloud-based environment. “It is essential to build a solid implementation of FinOps,” she explains. This collaborative approach ensures that Sky’s Cloud strategy aligns with broader organizational goals, creating a shared sense of responsibility between different teams for optimizing resource use.

She emphasizes the importance of communication and education throughout the organization. “One of the huge challenges is getting your business to understand the change,” she says. “I think it has to be a partnership between business functions, finance teams and engineering teams to understand what the changes bring, what the challenges are and the benefits. This isn’t just about migrating what you have on premises to the cloud; that will probably be very expensive and inefficient. You have to rethink workflows, you have to design and you have to continuously set cost targets.”

Future of manufacturing and personalized experiences

At the heart of Sky’s strategy is the ambition to create a seamless and engaging experience for customers, and it sees IP and cloud technologies as the foundation for a new era of media production. With a cloud-based infrastructure, production workflows can become more automated and efficient, allowing Sky to deliver content faster and with more functionality.

Gomila believes that the scale and flexibility that IP and Cloud enable are particularly suited to the sport, which has highly erratic resource demands. “I always look at it as a catalyst for everything else we want to do,” she says. “Using the cloud opens the door to a lot of real-time analysis and data connection.” Sky’s Sports Plus feature, which gives viewers the ability to choose from multiple camera angles, is an example of how Cloud and IP can create more interactive and personalized viewing experiences.

She envisions a future where more content, such as youth and amateur sports, can be streamed to viewers, using cloud-powered automation to reduce costs and improve accessibility. “Our goal is to provide more content and better experiences and make them affordable,” she says.

Sustainability and Cloud Providers

Sky’s move to IP and cloud technologies also aligns with its commitment to sustainability. Gomila notes that cloud adoption offers significant environmental benefits because cloud-hosted data centers are generally more energy efficient than traditional on-premises servers. “Cloud brings a big advantage when you really do the calculations for energy consumption and how efficient the Cloud providers are compared to doing it yourself,” she says.

Sky’s sustainability efforts extend to its partnerships, with the company encouraging suppliers to adopt environmentally friendly practices. Gomila continues: “Sky is very strict on sustainability standards – not just with cloud providers, but with all our partners.” The remote production capabilities powered by IP further reduce travel requirements, minimizing Sky’s carbon footprint and supporting its sustainability goals.

Sky’s adoption of IP and cloud technologies represents more than just a technical upgrade: it is a transformation that is reshaping the way media is produced, distributed and consumed. Led by Gomila, this journey is about using technology to improve the customer experience, promote sustainable practices and create a resilient, forward-looking organization. “The technology is there to serve the customer. We want to offer more, make it affordable and provide better experiences,” she says.