Video Streaming is the New Routine – ETCIO.com

By Prabhakar Jayakumar

The first case of Covid-19 in India was reported on January 30, 2020, and since then, video streams have become increasingly integral to our routines. A recent survey by Google reveals that Indias video viewing population will touch the 500 million mark this year.

While entertainment continues to be the primary driver of video streaming services, India is also increasingly leveraging videos to consult doctors, learn, and communicate. One out of every three Indians watches online video today. What is also interesting is that 43 percent of online video viewing occasions in India are learning based. A deep dive into the video streaming market reveals aninfrastructure thatis strengthening Indias video consumption for today and tomorrow.

Geriatric and pediatric care have especially benefitted from video streaming in telemedicine, a subset of telehealth. The new guidelines on telemedicine and telehealth issued by the Government of India in March 2020 further bolster this channel of care. Teleconsultations, remote care, interactive tele-surgical assistance, and remote procedure supervision are some of the other video streaming applications of telehealth that offer multiple advantages but also need a robust IT digital infrastructure.

As with telehealth, COVID-19 has also brought in drastic changes to education. Today, kids continue learning in virtual classrooms from the comfort of their homes. Real-time video streaming software is enabling interactive and collaborative learning. Besides formal education, yoga, meditation, music, dance, fitness you name itare taught through video streams today. At the same time, group video chats such as Houseparty are minimizing the feeling of isolation for people away from family and friends during the pandemic.

Cloud infrastructure that is agile, cost-effective, and scalable is vital for the success of high bandwidth solutions in domains such as telehealth, education, and entertainment. The right cloud infrastructure not only minimizes the latency of video streaming but also makes scaling of apps, deploying of new products, and designing of highly reliable software fast and seamless.

If you are looking to build top-notch live-streaming applications, partnering with a cloud provider that offers end-to-end cloud services is critical. Some of these providers also offer management and developer tools that simplify the development of live-streaming applications on the cloud.

Today, the pandemic continues to impact our daily lives, and we expect to see a surge in bandwidth-intensive applications across sectors. However, a word of caution for developers as they choose cloud services is that bandwidth costs can be substantial, perhaps even making up most of their cloud computing costs.

App developers often dismiss bandwidth costs as negligible and may overlook those costs until their app reaches a significant scale, at which point they realize the impact it has on their bottom line. Hence, we would encourage developers to work with cloud providers, where the pricing is competitive and unambiguous.

Our reliance on video streaming is growing into a habit and becoming more integral to our daily lives. As the pandemic abates, we believe that video streaming will continue to provide new opportunities for real-time interactive engagement. With the right cloud and networking infrastructure, it will redefine user experiences and conveniences.

The author is Global Head: Go-To-Market at DigitalOcean

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Video Streaming is the New Routine - ETCIO.com