Every year, we put together an infographic that captures the scale of work moving through the SDVI Rally platform. And every year, the numbers are impressive. But this time, we hit a head-turning milestone: 627 million jobs processed in a single year. We’ve blown by the half-billion mark, and we got there faster than any of us imagined. (Check out our latest infographic to see the full breakdown of how media supply chains are scaling beyond expectations.)
That 627 million number got me thinking about how, though we’ve addressed scalability in many ways, we’ve never really stepped back to explore what scale means in a media supply chain. Earlier blog posts (including this blog series) examine ways that cloud-native infrastructure brings flexibility and efficiency to media workflows, but what about the impact of scaling media supply chains?
We’re seeing that true scalability really is about more than size, or expanding your capacity. It’s about being ready for anything, whether that means handling more work than ever before or dialing resources down to match shifting demand. It’s about being able to say “yes” when opportunity comes knocking and keeping resources aligned with demand when you finish the job.
Smarter Scaling of Supply Chain Capacity
For years, building a media supply chain meant making a choice. Some companies built for their immediate needs while recognizing that any new demand would require costly expansion. Others built for peak capacity, investing in infrastructure that would sit idle most of the time.
Both approaches have their problems. Building for today, you can quickly outgrow your infrastructure and face delays while scrambling for more resources. Building for peak demand, you might find yourself sitting on unused capacity that’s depreciating in value while still costing you money. The kicker is that, whether you’re building for today or for the future, your on-premise infrastructure can only scale in one direction: up.
A cloud-native supply chain upends that equation. No longer tethered to rigid infrastructure, you can scale up when you need to, and just as easily scale down when you don’t. And true scalability means matching resources to work at the most precise level. For example, if you need to process just one more QC job, the Rally platform provisions exactly what’s needed in that moment. If you suddenly have to spin up a hundred million transcodes, it does that too — immediately.
This is why we see numbers like 627 million jobs in a year. While orchestration of a cloud-based media supply chain streamlines workflows, a platform like Rally also facilitates on-the-fly provisioning of the infrastructure needed — as much and for as long as needed — for every single job.
And this flexibility doesn’t just apply to Rally itself. A huge portion of the work Rally orchestrates is done through third-party applications, from transcoding to QC. Rally provisions the resources needed for those applications so that users don’t have to worry about capacity and plan for it in advance. The right tools and infrastructure are always there when needed, and gone when they’re not.
Scalability for Companies of All Sizes
It’s easy to look at the 627 million jobs number and think, “Sure, but that’s because Rally serves eight of the 10 largest media companies in the world.” And that’s true! But scalability isn’t just for global giants.
Every media company, whether large or small, faces the challenge of precisely aligning resources with the work they support. For decades, the solution was to estimate, or even guess, and risk either overbuilding or falling short. But with a cloud-based media supply chain, that question disappears. Rally ensures you always have the right capacity at the right time, whether you’re processing thousands of jobs or millions. No excess, no waiting, no waste.
The Future of Supply Chains Is Elastic
A year or two ago, processing more than half a billion jobs in a single year was difficult to imagine. But here we are. And the numbers keep growing. What lesson can we take from this growth? Scale isn’t just about volume; it’s about agility. It’s about having an infrastructure that responds instantly to whatever your business demands.
If you’re still relying on fixed infrastructure, we’d love to chat about how a scalable cloud-based media supply chain and management platform can help you transform your operations. Get in touch for a quick call or demo.
