Press

Written by John Bradshaw, Field CTO Cloud EMEA at Akamai, this foreword examines the pressures reshaping media streaming in 2025. Viewers now expect instant playback and flawless quality across every device, while operators grapple with massive content catalogues, international rights complexity, and rising egress costs. AI has moved from experiment to strategic priority — driving automated content tagging, personalised recommendations, and targeted advertising — but high egress fees and proprietary cloud AI remain significant barriers to innovation. Bradshaw argues that distributed, open cloud models are the path forward, enabling media companies to scale efficiently, eliminate vendor lock-in, and put high-performance GPU and VPU capacity to work without prohibitive cost.