AWS Announces Partnership with MGM to Modernize its Media Supply Chain

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced a multi-year collaboration with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) to reimagine its core media supply chain and enterprise-wide media distribution platform. MGM owns one of the world’s largest libraries of premium film and television content, including the Bond and Rocky film franchises, as well as the series Fargo, Vikings, and The Handmaid’s Tale, and is focused on the production, acquisition, licensing, and global distribution of its film and television content across all media platforms. MGM is migrating its content library and critical SAP workloads to AWS to power its media supply chain as well as support its content rights and distribution processes. Running on AWS, MGM will distribute content across multiple platforms quickly and at scale.

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“MGM has one of the world’s deepest libraries of premium film and television content, and we’re innovating in the cloud to improve how we get this extensive, rich content out to distributors around the world using scalable, microservices-based architectures”

Traditional media supply chains are highly decentralized, expensive to maintain, and rely on manual processes and third parties to distribute content to new and existing platforms. MGM’s new cloud-based media supply chain will leverage AWS compute, serverless, storage, machine learning, and media services to modernize its infrastructure. MGM will build a data lake on AWS using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) that will provide up-to-date content rights and ownership information and connect to a microservices architecture that will simplify and automate workflows and processes throughout MGM’s complex media supply chain. MGM and AWS are working together to innovate across MGM’s development and fulfillment processes, tackling challenges from intellectual property acquisition and development, through the delivery of professional content and servicing materials.

MGM will leverage AWS Media Services, including AWS Elemental MediaConvert, to more fully automate the processes for preparing and delivering MGM’s library of feature film and premium television content, optimizing video for viewing on any screen. Using AWS Lambda serverless compute and AWS container services, the new media supply chain will enable MGM to transfer, process, and package video for all media channels on demand without having to procure, plan, and run infrastructure. In addition, Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier, and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive will provide MGM with secure and cost effective content and data storage and archiving.

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Applying machine learning services like Amazon Rekognition (AWS’s service that adds intelligent image and video analysis to applications) will enable MGM to analyze content, as well as create and tag specific video frames with metadata, making it easier for MGM’s partners to find and license film and TV shows for their lineups. In addition, MGM will leverage AWS analytics services like Amazon EMR (AWS’s industry-leading cloud big data service for processing vast amounts of data using open source tools) and machine learning services such as Amazon SageMaker (AWS’s service that helps developers and data scientists build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly in the cloud and at the edge) to predict content viewing and sales trends so they can forecast demand for their vast content library.

“MGM has one of the world’s deepest libraries of premium film and television content, and we’re innovating in the cloud to improve how we get this extensive, rich content out to distributors around the world using scalable, microservices-based architectures,” said Doug Rousso, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of MGM. “AWS gives us the flexibility, scalability, reliability, and security to deliver premium content to customers through intelligent and automated supply chain solutions. Our new cloud-based media supply chain will give us increased visibility into owned content, the ability to better inform our sales teams, and faster processing of licensing deal that will help us deliver more content experiences to viewers and grow new revenue opportunities.”

“MGM is reinventing its media supply chain in the world’s leading cloud, leveraging AWS’s unmatched functionality and scalability to more effectively deliver its vast library of content to existing and new TV and viewer platforms,” said Greg Pearson, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “AWS’s proven performance and comprehensive set of cloud and professional services will help MGM succeed in its cloud transformation and create a complete, modern media supply chain for video. We look forward to expanding our work together to continue to drive innovation across this supply chain and deliver improved customer experiences to audiences around the world.”