Having postponed investment in storage during the peak of the pandemic and adapting to new workflows in its wake, large and small media companies are due for a massive overhaul of their storage systems. With physical hardware aging and the cost of operations increasing, many companies have reached a point where to maintain reliability and uptime, they need to update or replace on-premise storage systems.
Concerned about a large-scale investment in a solution that merely catches them up, many media organisations are moving from on-prem hardware deployments to cloud storage. The latter approach is compelling because it can make equivalent capacity available at a fraction of the cost of an on-prem storage infrastructure overhaul and because cloud storage solutions provide greater flexibility, accessibility, scalability, and efficiency. The shift from on-prem to cloud storage represents a technology transformation that brings unprecedented flexibility to collaborative content creation. Making an incremental, seamless transition to cloud storage, organisations increase their capacity to adjust to new requirements, client requirements, and workflows while tightly managing security and ongoing costs. In short, creative organisations are better positioned to respond to fresh opportunities and company growth.
Unlocking agile collaboration with efficient scaling
Media companies, production facilities, and enterprises that produce content are shifting to cloud technology to address their critical operational challenges. First and foremost is the issue of remote access and collaboration. For organisations with personnel or teams dispersed across various locations, cloud storage enables seamless file sharing and access, regardless of geographical barriers. This has been particularly crucial in the post-pandemic era, where remote work has become normalised and even preferred due to the increased agility and cost efficiencies it can enable for key production tasks.
The transition to cloud storage also addresses the need for scalable and flexible storage. As production quality increases — think 4K and even 8K content — the need for ample, scalable storage becomes critical. Cloud environments allow media companies to scale up or down based on current project demands. In addition to eliminating the significant upfront costs associated with physical hardware investment or upgrades, cloud storage eliminates the obsolescence challenge manufacturers of on-prem storage introduce with their accelerating new product introduction cycles. Organisations can scale up storage use by implementing a cloud-enabled model without overinvesting in capacity. This model also reduces operating costs associated with maintaining and cooling physical on-prem servers.
Enhancing remote collaboration and data management
Modern cloud storage technologies are designed to integrate smoothly with existing production software and tools and facilitate a hybrid utilisation model of on-prem and cloud storage. This integration is vital for companies transitioning in phases or experimenting with cloud capabilities without fully committing to a complete infrastructure overhaul. Staff, remote teams, and freelancers can collaborate using familiar tools and workflows.
Because access to cloud storage can be controlled and monitored, media companies can offer freelancers the ability to work anywhere with the files they need without the risks associated with physical shipments or unauthorised access. While gaining the freedom related to cloud-enabled access, organisations maintain clear ownership of data and its use. These capabilities expedite production cycles and broaden the talent pool, allowing for more creative and diverse outputs.
Moreover, the real-time collaboration enabled by cloud technologies means that edits and changes to digital media files are reflected immediately across all end users, ensuring that everyone is always working on the latest version of a project. This synchronisation cuts down project completion times and avoids the confusion (and wasted storage) often associated with creating and maintaining multiple versions of files.
Efficient file and data management is a further benefit of the move to cloud storage. By leveraging advanced data management protocols and AI-driven workflows, today’s cloud-based storage solutions can automate routine tasks and optimise data transfer routes while ensuring data integrity. Realising a greater degree of automation, organisations can streamline and accelerate workflows with lower potential for human error.
Driving the future of media production
The media industry is known for change and adoption. But over the last ten years, the rate of change has increased dramatically. Combined with social and economic change, flexibility has become the cornerstone of media production. In fact, rapid change and increased uncertainty have made flexibility vital and smart technology investment more critical than ever. As a result, media organisations are re-examining all parts of their business. Fixed storage solutions with the high cost of forklift upgrades and ongoing operational and support costs are now seen as impediments to the flexibility, scalability, and efficiency needed to navigate these challenges successfully.
As a result, media companies are navigating the complexities of modern content production by embracing cloud storage. Cloud storage is a transformational solution supporting dynamic, cost-effective, and efficient media operations. The pandemic may have accelerated the shift toward remote workflows, but the move to cloud storage is a forward-looking decision that better supports the continually evolving media production landscape and an enabler of efficient growth.
