Atlas Enabling Sustainable Metadata Management

As a business, MetaBroadcast is committed to reducing carbon emissions across its business. Atlas, our cloud-based active metadata platform, provides metadata management for broadcasters, streaming services, Pay TV providers, production companies, and audience measurement JICs. With the media and entertainment industry’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions, the ongoing environmental sustainability of the Atlas platform is a primary focus. 

From its inception, Atlas has been deployed in the cloud with the understanding that cloud providers have a lower carbon footprint and are more energy efficient than typical on-premise alternatives.  This efficiency results from investment in efficient power and cooling technologies, operating energy-efficient server populations, and achieving higher server utilisation rates. Cloud workloads reduce their environmental impact by using shared resources like networking, power cooling, and physical facilities. 

Atlas, deployed in the AWS cloud, benefits from AWS’s focus on efficiency and continuous innovation across its global infrastructure, with a stated goal to power 100% of its operations with renewable energy by 2025. AWS’s sustainability impact is underpinned by the climate pledge – a commitment to be net zero by 2040. Independent research from 451 Research noted that AWS operations used 88% less carbon emissions than the same task implemented by other medium-sized US data centers. AWS has already achieved a 29% decrease in carbon emissions from purchased electricity in their operations, and 90% of the electricity used is attributable to renewable energy sources. 

AWS is responsible for the sustainability of the cloud, delivering efficient, shared infrastructure, water stewardship, and sourcing renewable power. MetaBroadcast is responsible for sustainability in the cloud, optimising workloads, and resource utilisation. MetaBroadcast has aligned its architecture with AWS cloud best practices with specific attention to sustainability. 

Sustainability in the cloud is a continuous effort focused primarily on energy reduction and efficiency across all components of a workload by achieving the maximum benefit from the resources provisioned and minimising the total resources required. Atlas has been designed using an efficient programming language and data storage techniques. Java was selected due to its  Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation and efficient memory management making it a high-performance language. This is particularly advantageous for handling the large datasets required for metadata management while setting the stage for using complex machine-learning models. Java’s multithreading and parallel computing capabilities enable efficient processing of big data. A crucial differentiator in Atlas’ design is its use of modern algorithms to automate processes to ingest, cleanse, unify, and harmonise metadata.  Automated deduplication of data upon ingest optimises resource utilisation by requiring less processing power and storage capacity while also reducing the time it takes users to initiate a search query and retrieve relevant data. 

As we move forward, we will continue to adopt AWS’s recommended design principles when architecting our cloud workloads to maximise sustainability and minimise our carbon impact.

• We have established our long-term sustainability goals and are actively tracking our progress.
• We track and measure the impact of our cloud footprint using the AWS Carbon Footprint tool.
• We optimise resource utilisation by anticipating workloads and implementing design to ensure high utilisation and energy efficiency of the underlying hardware.
• We regularly review and implement updates to improve the efficiency of our code.

Our collaboration with AWS is a testament to our shared commitment to sustainability. Together, we anticipate and adopt new, more efficient hardware and software offerings, ensuring that our cloud-based operations are at the forefront of environmental responsibility.