Al Jazeera to move to the cloud with Avid extension

Al Jazeera Media Network has extended its partnership with Avid, in a “multi-year” agreement. 

Avid, which entered an agreement to be acquired by private equity firm STG this month, has agreed a deal that will transition the network’s production operation towards a cloud-based subscription service, together with multi-site collaboration and remote production.

This will mean changes to Al Jazeera’s news and programming creation workflows and will aim to connect teams distributed across its regional hubs – in Qatar, London, and Washington, DC – and its global network of news bureaus and other sites.

Al Jazeera will use an Avid MediaCentral | Flex subscription model, giving it access to the latest platform tools and Avid Nexis storage. It will also include a transition path in the near future from its existing hardware servers onto Avid’s software-based and cloud-enabled media ingest and playout platform, Avid | Stream IO. 

The agreement also includes subscription licenses to Avid | Edit On Demand, Avid’s cloud production platform.

Ahmed AlFahad, AJMN’s executive director of technology & network operations, said: “We’re very pleased to continue our long-standing relationship with Avid. This new subscription agreement gives us a comprehensive end-to-end solution and all the flexibility we need, so that our journalists can focus on what they do best–telling the important stories of the day.”

Avid’s chief revenue officer, Tom Cordiner, added: “We’re delighted to extend our agreement with such a long-time customer as Al Jazeera. This move to subscription provides them real flexibility and the latest functionality from Avid, while positioning them to take advantage of new upgrades to meet their future requirements.”