Tag: Lucidlink

Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2026
Las Vegas, NV April 19-22

Published: April 25, 2026 ID: TBW2177

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Computer Talk Radio Edition

ABSTRACT

“NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas convened over 58,000 media and broadcast professionals across production, distribution, and operations. On the show floor, conversations centered on evolving broadcast stacks, asset management realities, creation workflows, and physical infrastructure. Examples on display reflected shifts toward flexibility, scalability, and integration without consensus on where standardization ultimately settles across the industry today.”

The Conference
- A community of over 58,000 media and broadcast professionals gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
- 70% of the attendees were buyers with 48% were first-time registered attendees.
Cautions
- Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
- Just because a technology can do something in general doesn’t mean it will work in your environment. It is critical to validate a technology including its false positive and error rates.
Modern Broadcast Stack

The Lexi Language Layer by AI Media acts as a secure regulated gateway for major broadcasters ensuring captioning and language services meet strict broadcast standards. With an incredible 80% market share, this platform enables AI native tool integration at the final point of broadcast distribution. This in turn enables the capture of valuable viewer and content insights. All of this capability has been moved from a traditional Capex model to an Opex model enabling broadcasters to quickly update their equipment.

Brightcove is all about scale achieved through strategic innovation and investment. In fact, Brightcove was acquired by Bending Spoons resulting in over 20 new major features and capabilities since the closing a year ago. Brightcove brings their end-to-end solution to Broadcasters, Media Networks, Sports Networks, and Publishers.

Moving coverage from the platform to networks, one of the longest desires in broadcasting is the ability to leverage Internet-based flexible workflows. Zixi started with this goal in mind and delivers a dynamic protocol translation including IP. They are excited about the ease with which they enable their customers to create regional variants for thousands of events at once. This enablement spans language, cultural, and local requirements without physical hardware in every market.

WOWZA provides media infrastructure that can run on your laptop, avoiding monthly cloud fees. Their claim to fame is the ability to connect users to live video feeds. Since it can run on a laptop, they are able to operate behind firewalls to provide a video intelligence framework or the plumbing to apply AI. This AI can be applied to live video in real-time. Furthermore, this solution runs on a Java stack enabling portability across Linux, Windows, macOS, and containerized laptops.

Manage What You Create

Many in media have mountains and mountains of data but have no idea what they have or more importantly cannot find what they want on demand. Axle AI enables semantics search over all your videos. Thanks to an acquisition since we last covered them, they now feature extensive capabilities for photographs as well. If your organization insists data must remain localized for security and data control reasons, Axle AI has you covered. Finally, the solution runs in a browser.

One of the more difficult tasks in media workflows is how to ensure everyone has access to what they need without extensive delays. The IT team worries about the network costs of constantly moving massive amounts of data. In the meantime, legal is terribly worried about having the organization’s IP spread everywhere. Lucidlink prides itself on enabling global instant access to media teams from centralized storage without massive, constant file movement.

Planetcast provides an end-to-end broadcast ecosystem powered by 100% Planetcast intellectual property and code. This ownership enables full control over the infrastructure enabling flexible, hybrid, workflow operations. A key focus today is empowering customers with searchability and meta indexing for asset management.

Create Faster, Smarter

Endless sessions run throughout the event. For example, here is a quick peek at, “How fortune brands are betting on Creatives”. In this session, it was emphasized that organizations should develop ecosystems and relationships as opposed to strictly transactional. The best relationships have the most impact over time, not just a one-off advertisement hit piece.

So how can one create these wonderful assets? Coming soon to a Library, Media Room, or Shared office space near you is Studiomatics’ One-button Studio Go recording kiosk. Enjoy the demo to understand how easy this sophisticated system is to operate. From auto user detection to integrated digital lightboard, whiteboard, and easy content sharing, everything is automated right to the delivery of the created video.

A software solution that aggregates asset libraries, collaboration tools, enterprise features, Freepik enables IT and security over all AI models. Furthermore, their complete creative studio enables real-time collaboration and offers support and training.

Human & Physical Layer

Backpacks are an asset in any industry, but in media many carry sensitive, heavy equipment, particularly cameras and related gear. The Wandrd backpack shared their solution that provides 3 different sizes and 7 colors portfolio. Each pack works with a series of modular interior camera cubes. This flexibility alongside their designs with zippers anywhere you might need one, it’s a fun product to evaluate for your needs if you’re in media or simply want a highly useful, flexible, backpack system.

A common required asset in the media, commercial, LED displays, unlike those of consumers’, are specifically designed for long, often continuous operations. GCL was excited to share that they have a warehouse full of inventory in Dallas, Texas. Their inventory is ready to go them with 3-year local support. GCL has been manufacturing LED displays for 27 years.

Conference Vibe

After over 50 videos including two livestreams and over a dozen fact checks, our coverage of NAB Show 2026 closes. Registration was quite efficient and was available at every hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center sans South Hall that hosted another event – Wrestle Mania Fan Fest. West Hall featured the AI Innovation Pavilion, Start-Up Pavilion, and Sports Theater. Central Hall hosted the Creator Center, TV and Radio Headquarters as well as a massive networking lounge. North Hall hosted the Main Stage and vendors related to production workflows. The standard transportation options were available at the Las Vegas Convention Center be it the Vegas Loop or taking the West to North Hall connector bridge. Likewise, the standard eateries across West Hall and Central and North Halls including their shared food court.

We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage, but you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of prior NAB Shows in 2025 and 2024, as well as InfoComm.

We once again live streamed from on site. On Sunday from North Hall and Monday from West Hall. Specifically, we request those attending to find me to answer Questions 1-6, to introduce all to TBW Advisors LLC, and request assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my syndicated segment on the April 25th nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

We conducted research for six additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2026 Las Vegas Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.

The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the NAB Show live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The 2026 Vegas NAB Show will once again return to Las Vegas Convention Center on April 4-7, 2027.

^*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples of products in the same category may have also been on display.

Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Vegas Convention Library, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.
April 25, 2026
Whisper Report: What are the best practices for integrating cloud technologies in media workflows?
Published to clients: July 16, 2025 ID: TBW2077

Published to Readers: July 17, 2025

Whisper Club Release: December 15, 2025

Public and Video Edition: December 17, 2025

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

“Media companies now favor hybrid cloud workflows for flexibility, speed, and cost-efficiency. Open standards ensure interoperability, while strong security protects valuable IP. Experts stress aligning cloud use with business goals, maintaining control and visibility, and using cloud strategically—not universally—to optimize collaboration, performance, and infrastructure investment.”

Target Audience Titles:
- Chief Technology Officer, Chief Digital Officer,
- Chief Data Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Content Officer
- VP Engineering, VP Media Technology, Dir Cloud Strategy, Dir Media Ops, Head of post production, Direct of IT Infrastructure
- Cloud Solution Architects, Media System engineers, DevOps Engineer, Video Platform Engineer, Broadcast Engineer, Post Production Engineer, Media Workflow Specialist, Software Engineer, Storage and Archiving Engineer, SRE
Key Takeaways
- Hybrid workflows balance cloud flexibility with on-prem performance and cost control.
- Open standards ensure seamless integration across media tools and platforms.
- Strong security protects media IP with access control and audit trails.
- Cloud strategy should align with business goals, not just follow trends.
What are the best practices for integrating cloud technologies in media workflows?

We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the Technology experts gathering at NAB Show 2025 held in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding what are the best practices for integrating cloud technologies in media workflows?

Media and the Cloud

Its been fascinating to watch the Media’s use of the cloud the last handful of years. As Axle.ai’s Sam Bogoch observed, “during covid people would just put things in the cloud willy-nilly because there was no reason to put it anywhere else. They didn’t go to their offices. There was no on premise. There was no concentration of work.” Furthermore, as Dell Technologies’ Tom Burns pointed out, “The promise of cloud was that you didn’t have to own or maintain infrastructure and that’s been awesome.”

Or as Ross’s David Green observed, “they don’t have to have a large upfront capital investment.” Thus when there was no concentration of workers or work, the lack of capital investment and no need for infrastructure maintenance was quite attractive. But its important to keep in mind as Ross’s David Green further explained, “cloud is just a technology – not a solution.” Thus, in the post-COVID world, Media has been rebalancing how as an industry it works with cloud.

Standard Open Systems

Regardless of where you put your workload for what part of the media workflow, the technologies involved must work together. Latakoo’s Jade Kurian gave us a great example, “if I have one company that does transcription let’s say really really well but it’s no connected to my media workflow. Then if I start using that as an enterprise media company, then the problem is I’ve created something that slows down my team even though I’m trying to make it faster for them.” To prevent the slowdown from incompatible tools, Cinnafilm’s Dom Jackson suggested, “to make sure that all of these technologies are using somewhat standardized APIs and ontologies and so on to allow somewhat atomic solutions to be combined easily into larger workflows.” In other words as Magnify’s Ken Ruck summarized, “the best ways to be open and not be a closed system.” The goal, as summarized by Jade Kurian, “it is all about speed -speed from camera to that pane of glass that exists that somebody’s watching on the other end”

Secure Media

Regardless of where your solution executes or where the media resides, protecting that media is absolutely critical. As Eon Media’s Greg Morrow simply stated, “media companies are built on their intellectual property so protection of their IP is incredibly important.” As warned during our coverage of Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2025, just because a technology can share media, doesn’t mean it does so securely with an audit trail. Lucidlink’s Gergana Berman further cautioned, “a lot of providers out there might claim that they have a very secure solution, but you have to check for yourself.” If this is an area your team is concerned with, clients should book an inquiry before purchasing the technology. In 2025, it is also critical to check the terms and conditions of any AI technologies leveraged. As Gergana Berman further explained, “ make sure their terms and conditions are not saying they can use your media copyrighted media.” Or as the saying goes, don’t use free products for when something is free – you are the product. In this case the valuable IP is the product of the media company for which you are working.

Some solutions have built in capabilities to assist in protecting your intellectual property. Greg Morrow pointed out that Eon Media’s solution has, “three levels of watermarking that we produce So we have produce a visible watermark on the asset and an invisible watermark.” Leostream’s Karen Gondoly perhaps best summarized the totality of the need, “I need to have control of my data. I need to have control of who has access to it. I want to secure that data so I want to make sure that I’m authorizing users correctly. I want to make sure that I’m using zero trust principles when I’m providing access to people. I need visibility. I want to make sure I always know who has access to my data what they’re doing with it where they’re accessing it from.” In other words, I don’t just need to be able to control it, I need a full audit trail of the five w’s for my data. Who accessed, What was accessed, When accessed, Where accessed and Why accessed as depicted in Figure 1.

Hybrid Solutions

Today, most media companies have settled into hybrid architectures involving a combination of on premise and cloud technologies. Strada’s Michael Cioni best summarized, “no one can actually put everything in one cloud. There’s too many collaborators. There’s too many different clouds. There’s too many pros and cons to clouds and nobody has enough money to store everything there So I think the best practices for integrating cloud into your workflow is to actually look for alternative solutions that may not use the cloud in the traditional ways and figure out how to collaborate across clouds versus putting everything in one place.” So what should go where? One can observe, those with on-premise based solutions have different answers vs those with predominantly cloud based solutions. Ross’s David Green recommends, “to not start with I want to do cloud the key is to start with why do I want to use cloud and then figure out who can help you solve those.”

SNS’s Alex Hlvarty cautions, “we can’t control internet outages or data breaches or things like that are mitigated by making sure that you keep your own assets on site in your possession but then utilizing cloud for its very clear benefits as far as making things available to people all over the world through one single portal.” Axle.ai’s Sam Bogoch also likes to keep things he is actively working on close. “on premise the things that you’re immediately working on because it does not make sense to keep asking for them politely from the cloud when you’re getting work done much faster on premise and meanwhile things like archive and backup clearly belong in the cloud.” From a capitalization perspective, Dell Technologies Tom Burn’s recommends an extension of a common metaphor. “let’s think of the old rocks pebbles sand metaphor where rocks are the fully capitalized on prem infrastructure that you need to keep 99.9% utilized and the pebbles are the project-based uses of compute and storage that aren’t part of your base commit and don’t hit your ybudget and the sand is the pure burstable joy that is the public hyperscalers. We’re looking at hybrid workflows that combine all three screening up.”

Once again, clients should schedule an inquiry to review your hybrid media architecture against your organizational priorities.

Related playlists
Corporate Headquarters

2884 Grand Helios Way

Henderson, NV 89052

©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

Research available only to clients at this time.
July 16, 2025

Tag: Lucidlink

ABSTRACT

The Conference

Cautions

Target Audience Titles:

Key Takeaways