Global media platform · Cross-region MAP migration
Inventory profiling and cloud transformation across US and EU data centers, sizing high-capacity media storage, compute, and localized workflows under AWS MAP.
At a glance
- Problem
- A global media localization, subtitling, and dubbing enterprise operated multi-petabyte media processing pipelines distributed across physical data centers in North America and Europe. The decentralized infrastructure footprint suffered from inconsistent visibility, spiraling on-premise SAN/NAS storage expansion costs, and fragmented licensing agreements across continents. Preparing for an enterprise-wide cloud transition under the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) required categorizing over 600 virtual and physical servers, analyzing transcode utilization peaks, and establishing a defensible multi-year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model.
- Approach
- Led the cross-region technical discovery and transformation analysis across both US and EU infrastructure environments. By normalizing inventory exports and workload telemetry, mapped legacy render/transcode clusters to dynamic Amazon EC2 Graviton and Spot instance fleets, and designed tiered storage strategies (Amazon S3 Standard to Glacier Deep Archive) for multi-petabyte media catalogs. Authored the formal Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) findings, established phase-wise success criteria, and presented the final financial TCO deck to C-level stakeholders.
- What this enables
- Eliminates regional infrastructure silos, models scalable transcode compute that expands on-demand during major film and television release cycles, and opens up AWS MAP partner funding for enterprise migration waves.
Key results
Profiling distributed US and EU data center estates for media supply-chain cloud migration
The problem
A global media localization, subtitling, and dubbing enterprise operated multi-petabyte media processing pipelines distributed across physical data centers in North America and Europe. The decentralized infrastructure footprint suffered from inconsistent visibility, spiraling on-premise SAN/NAS storage expansion costs, and fragmented licensing agreements across continents. Preparing for an enterprise-wide cloud transition under the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) required categorizing over 600 virtual and physical servers, analyzing transcode utilization peaks, and establishing a defensible multi-year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model.
The architectural solution
Led the cross-region technical discovery and transformation analysis across both US and EU infrastructure environments. By normalizing inventory exports and workload telemetry, mapped legacy render/transcode clusters to dynamic Amazon EC2 Graviton and Spot instance fleets, and designed tiered storage strategies (Amazon S3 Standard to Glacier Deep Archive) for multi-petabyte media catalogs. Authored the formal Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) findings, established phase-wise success criteria, and presented the final financial TCO deck to C-level stakeholders.
- 01 Cross-region inventory profiling Parallel extraction, data scrubbing, and normalization of physical and virtual assets across US and EU media facilities.
- 02 Media workload categorization Grouping high-throughput video transcode workers, audio mastering nodes, relational metadata tracking, and petabyte media archives.
- 03 Target cloud sizing & TCO Projecting 3-year compute and storage costs using EC2 Savings Plans, Graviton efficiency, and S3 lifecycle storage tiering.
- 04 MAP readiness & governance Executing Cloud Adoption Framework workshops, publishing MRA scores, and establishing phase-wise migration gates.
Overcoming geographic fragmentation in media workflows
Global media supply chains present unique infrastructure challenges: video rendering and audio mastering produce bursty, high-throughput compute demands, while multi-language dubbing and localization generate petabytes of persistent digital assets. Running these workloads on fixed hardware in regional data centers resulted in severe capacity bottlenecks during peak localization deadlines and massive idle overhead during lulls.
Under the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Assess phase, the discovery initiative required building an accurate, consolidated view of all compute, storage, and networking assets operating across North American and European facilities.
Implementation notes
- Cross-region inventory normalization: Ingested raw inventory extracts from divergent virtualization clusters across US and EU data centers. Standardized core CPU allocations, memory footprints, operating system versions, and storage allocations into a single unified data model.
- Compute transformation modeling: Identified that over 65% of legacy on-premises servers ran static batch transcode tasks. Designed a target compute model shifting these fixed server fleets to dynamic, containerized worker tasks on Amazon EKS using Graviton (ARM64) and EC2 Spot instances, cutting compute costs.
- Media storage tiering architecture: Analyzed storage access patterns across high-performance editing SANs, nearline NAS repositories, and deep cold archives. Modeled an automated cloud lifecycle policy moving media from Amazon S3 Standard (active localization) to S3 Infrequent Access, and finally S3 Glacier Deep Archive post-release, protecting margins on historical catalog storage.
The 6-Pillar Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
To prepare the organization for cross-border migration execution, Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) workshops were conducted evaluating organizational capabilities:
- Platform: Standardizing on Terraform Infrastructure as Code and AWS Organizations across continental business units.
- Security: Implementing cross-account IAM Identity Center access and centralized CloudTrail logging across US and EU target accounts.
- Operations: Transitioning from manual host configuration to automated golden AMI baking (HashiCorp Packer) and CI/CD deployment pipelines.
- People & Governance: Defining clear RACI matrices for application owners and establishing FinOps cost-allocation tags to track project-level media spend.
Executive approval and structured mobilize roadmap
The engagement delivered full documentation: the Recommended Migration Analysis Report, the Success Criteria & KPI Framework, and the MAP Assess Findings & TCO Executive Deck. The financial modeling demonstrated substantial multi-year savings compared to physical hardware refresh cycles, securing enterprise board approval to transition to the MAP Mobilize phase.
Questions about this case study?
Happy to go deeper on any part of this: the architecture, the trade-offs, or the decisions behind it.
anupojuprudhvi@gmail.com