In film, television and cinema production, all the signs are also pointing to the cloud. This was very clear at Medientage München, Europe's largest media congress, with more than 7,000 participants, 400 experts and more than 100 panel discussions, keynotes, talks and sessions. Blockchain, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are changing the media world and require a scalable and economical IT infrastructure from the cloud. For the first time, Deutsche Telekom and its public cloud offering were guests in Munich as both an exhibitor and a sponsor.

How is digitalization changing the media? How are technologically new offerings affecting society? These were the guiding questions during the discussions at the Messe München’s new Conference Center North, showing an industry that is striving to find a digital approach and ideas – not just for new formats, but also for new, data-driven business models. After all, with radio, print and classic TV now becoming obsolete as basic disciplines, anyone can become a media producer. This is made possible by apps and features such as Instagram TV, Periscope or Facebook Live. And with smartphones and tablets, everyone has the necessary equipment at their fingertips.

Three start-ups from Deutsche Telekom's TechBoost program were on site to demonstrate in lectures and workshops how attitude and ideas can come together: Multicast Media has developed an AI solution so that soaps, telenovelas and TV series can be translated, subtitled and even synchronized into over 30 languages at the touch of a button. SatoshiPay uses blockchain technology to send online micropayments between publishers and end customers. Raypack's algorithm is able to recognize faces in any moving image service – whether on-demand or live.

The start-ups have two things in common: As participants in Telekom’s TechBoost initiative, they also already use the Open Telekom Cloud. The solutions offered by the young media entrepreneurs require flexible, scalable computing and storage resources, such as those offered by the public cloud. " With the growth in possibilities comes an increase in the effort required, which in the future no company will be able to handle with its own IT," says Ralf Hülsmann, Head of Partner Ecosystem at T-Systems, who was present at the Medientage. "That's why more and more companies in the film industry are increasingly turning to cloud resources that can be flexibly scaled and only cost money when they're actually being used.”

These were arguments that also captured the attention of the filmmakers who were in Munich from October 24 to 26: The industry still relies in part on physical data carriers and local tape storage to manage the volume of material. However, the Open Telekom Cloud is ready for the full-cloud workflow so that in future it will be possible to acquire, edit and distribute content completely digitally from shoot to playout. "The Open Telekom Cloud is not just ideal for AI applications, but also for setting up archives or producing news," says Hülsmann.

For example, the cloud can replace locally operated, tape-based mass storage devices. Studios can store archive material more economically and also analyze it with AI applications and automatically mark it for people, places and buildings. It’s the same for decentralized news production: a web-based system from the public cloud brings all the team together online – whether journalists, editors, producers or directors. It wasn’t just the visitors to the Open Telekom Cloud booth who could see for themselves the advantages for the broadcast industry.

Medientage München GmbH is the organizer of the annual congress. The Medientage München is supported by the Bavarian State Chancellery and the Bavarian regulatory authority for new media (BLM). The event was hosted by Siegfried Schneider, BLM president and chairman of the shareholders' meeting of Medientage München. Georg Eisenreich, Bavarian Minister of State for Media, Digital Affairs and Europe, opened the event. The motto of this year's edition was: "Engage! Shaping Media Tech Society." Next year, the Medientage München will take place from October 23 to 25, 2019. Information and tickets are available online at: www.medientage.de.