The Web Is Ready. The Question Is, Are You?

Walking through the halls of IBC years ago, it struck me like a bolt: everything here could be replaced with web technology. The racks of bespoke hardware, the over-engineered workflows, the endless tools built to move files around—none of it needs to exist in its current form.

Here’s the truth: the web already offers the tools we need to scale, collaborate, and innovate. Every other industry—banking, logistics, AI—has figured this out. And that’s not because our problems are “unique.” It’s because we’re late.

We’re Not Special. We’re Stuck.

In the media industry we love to tell ourselves we’re a special case:

• Our files are too big.
• Our workflows are too complex.
• Our latency requirements are too strict.

But are they, really?

High-frequency trading runs with microsecond latency—far stricter than what’s needed for live sports. AI models and weather simulations process petabytes of data—magnitudes larger than even Hollywood’s largest files.

What’s different? Those industries don’t rely on synchronous workflows or outdated infrastructure. They’ve embraced the web, which scales horizontally and processes asynchronously, turning problems of size, latency, and complexity into opportunities.

Meanwhile, media workflows remain stuck. We move files from point A to B to C, duplicating content, generating proxies, and waiting—always waiting—for processes to finish. Every step wastes time, resources, and money.

The Power of the Web: Lessons We Ignore

Here’s what the web gets right:

• It doesn’t move files. It moves resources—intelligently and efficiently.
• It doesn’t process tasks one at a time. It’s asynchronous, breaking workloads into smaller, parallel pieces that scale across thousands of servers.
• It doesn’t rely on location-bound systems. It scales effortlessly with cloud-native architectures.

These aren’t new ideas. HTTP/2, HTTP/3, Web Codecs, and APIs power the tools we use every day—whether you’re streaming Netflix, making a bank transfer, or shopping online.

Why not media?

My Nordic Experience

I’ve seen what happens when you lean into this thinking.

Years ago, I worked on a project with a Scandinavian public broadcaster. They replaced all their installed newsroom applications with web-based tools. The interface—everything producers and editors touched—moved to the browser.

On the surface, it didn’t look revolutionary. But under the hood, everything changed:

• Producers could collaborate live on the same program.
• Teams accessed their content instantly, without downloads or hardware installs.
• Over time, the broadcaster replaced their physical infrastructure piece by piece, moving towards virtual, scalable systems—without disrupting workflows.

This wasn’t just a concept. It worked. It opened up possibilities never previously imagined.

Why Hasn’t the Shift Happened?

There are two main reasons I see:

Synchronous Thinking: Media workflows are built on the legacy of SDI cables, their ST2110 drop-in replacement and linear editing, where everything must happen one step at a time. This mindset doesn’t scale. Meanwhile, modern web workflows thrive on asynchronous processing, breaking tasks into parallel workloads that finish faster and scale infinitely.

Leadership and R&D Gaps: The big legacy broadcast technology vendors need their limited R&D resources just to keep old systems alive and deliver incremental improvements. (In contrast, FAANG companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in web technologies every year.)

The result? Many companies are simply “lifting and shifting” their workflows into the cloud—moving their problems instead of solving them. Tools like CDI, virtual file systems replicating cloud hosted media files and remote desktops may check a box, but they’re expensive band-aids, not real progress.

We’re missing the point. The web isn’t about moving files into a remote environment. It’s about rethinking workflows entirely.

Security: Why the Web Is Safer Than Legacy Systems

Let’s address the elephant in the room: security.

For years, there’s been a perception that cloud-based workflows are less secure. But the opposite is true.

• Zero Trust Security ensures every request, every user, and every action is verified.
• End-to-End Encryption keeps your content safe in transit and at rest.
• Proven Protocols like HTTPS, TLS, and QUIC are constantly updated to meet evolving security threats.

Legacy file systems, by contrast, rely on static paths and location-bound infrastructure, which are far more vulnerable to breaches.

If you trust the web to secure your banking, healthcare, and government systems, there’s no reason you shouldn’t trust it with your media workflows.

Let’s Imagine The Future of Workflows

What if you didn’t need to move files, install applications, or rely on rigid hardware? What if media lived in a Media Mesh—a flexible, web-native network where tools come to the content?

Here’s how it works:

• Every frame is accessible instantly, through APIs.
• Editing, graphics, and automation happen on demand in the cloud.
• Teams collaborate globally in a browser, on the same content, at the same time.

Need to perform a quick transformation? A web node handles it instantly. Want to add graphics or perform live edits? The Media Mesh processes everything seamlessly, without waiting for files to transfer or proxies to generate.

The Media Mesh tears down the silos between production, post-production, and distribution. It replaces complex chains of tools and hardware with dynamic, interconnected nodes that operate as a single, scalable system.

The Web Is Ready, And Your Browser Is Too.

Yes, the once humble browser now has technologies including Web Codecs, WebAssembly, and WebGPU, meaning it can handle high-performance tasks—rendering, editing, and real-time processing—that once required specialized hardware.

• Web Codecs allow for low-latency, high-quality video processing.
• WebAssembly delivers near-native performance in browsers.
• WebGPU taps directly into GPU power for intensive workloads like encoding, compositing, and graphics rendering.

What we are developing today isn’t just “cloud-based” or a virtual filesystem replicating cloud hosted media. It’s web-native, media aware and running on lightweight devices with power that rival any high-end workstation.

Today the web already supports billions of users and trillions of transactions every day. It’s scalable, secure, and ready for media production.

What’s holding us back isn’t technology. It’s mindset. Stop thinking in files, silos, and single-threaded workflows. Let’s build.

On the web.