Shutterstock is also working with OpenAI, using their “models to generate content now trained off of our datasets,” Frazer says.
Optimizing for innovation
Analytics in cloud is also proving key to Shutterstock operations. The company relies on Amazon QuickSight and Athena to add visualizations and perform deep queries on its data to ensure optimal performance across the application lifecycle, Frazer says.
“Analytics doesn’t just stop at performance,” he says. “We want to understand everything that the customer is doing on our website. Why didn’t they click on this button? The customer hovered for two seconds and didn’t click that type of data. That is invaluable when optimizing your site.”
Other services such as Amazon CloudFront enable Shutterstock customers to enhance their content-on-demand networks, and Lambda — a serverless compute service that runs code without having to provision or manage servers — benefits Shutterstock customers wherever they are in the world, he says.
For Shutterstock, the cloud has led to faster innovation, but few enterprises are capable of exploiting sophisticated features out of the gate and ought to proceed cautiously with advanced cloud services, says IDC analyst Dave McCarthy.
While “the cloud gives enterprises access to the latest technologies with the ability to provision new resources in minutes, cloud providers are releasing new capabilities faster than enterprises can consume them,” McCarthy says.
Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran adds that accelerated innovation in the cloud offers a high risk/reward ratio “disruptors can leverage” and creates a dynamic work environment to attract top talent. But there are pitfalls to innovating too quickly, particularly if the enterprise lacks a cohesive strategy and direction, he says.
“It can lead to too much experimentation and lack of clear business value from such projects,” Chandrasekaran says, as well as “potentially lower reliability and more firefighting than true innovation.”
Even those organizations with the talent to tackle cutting-edge technologies in the cloud can be slowed by the nature of their business environments, McCarthy says. “Many companies find themselves in a hybrid architecture where they have one foot in the old world and one in the new,” he says. “That creates some unique challenges in how to manage both environments consistently.”
Still, the drumbeat for innovation marches on. “CIOs need to think of digital transformation in the context of continuous innovation,” McCarthy says. “It should not be considered a one-time exercise, but rather an ongoing process where new technology becomes embedded into the business as it becomes available.”
For Shutterstock, that process is a facet of the company’s culture, thanks to strong IT leadership, a robust cloud infrastructure, a diverse toolset, and talent, Frazer says.
