Content Delivery Networks

3Workflows

So far I have talked about high‐level trends across the sector and expressed my own views and opinions of some of those trends. Then, based on where I have seen them emerging, I have conjectured about where I see the industry sector heading.

Now we are going to turn our attention to the end‐to‐end production of video, and talk in some detail about aspects of the daisy chains of technologies that can be put together to create what are commonly termed “workflows.”

Obviously a good starting point is to agree what the term “workflow” actually means. As with all catchy terms in the IT sector, it sounds very specific, until you realize that different people are using the term to embrace slightly different things.

Let’s take the Wikipedia definition as a starting point¹:

A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person or group, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.

From a more abstract or higher‐level perspective, workflow may be considered a view or representation of real work. The flow being described may refer to a document, service or product that is being transferred from one step to another.

Workflows may be viewed as one fundamental building block to be combined with other parts of an organization's ...