The media and entertainment (M&E) industry is eager to embrace the cloud, but faces significant challenges. For example, remote shoots and distributed editing teams often struggle with traditional workflows that rely on outdated, on-premise systems, manual processes, and fragmented operations. The cloud offers a promising solution, but many organizations are still grappling with questions: How many M&E companies are transitioning to the cloud? What does a successful migration look like? And why is Storj’s distributed cloud a superior choice compared to legacy, centralized cloud providers?
To answer these questions, Storj went to media technology veterans for insights on the M&E industry’s shift to the cloud. This blog will share their perspectives, explore key considerations for data migration, and dive into the findings of a Storj survey conducted with 500 M&E leaders across the US and UK. (see full report - no wall)
How far is M&E from 100% cloud?
Many M&E companies are taking steps to migrate into the cloud, but it seems there is still a long way to go. According to the survey, 47% of respondents have less than 50% of their content in the cloud, while another 33% have 51-75% in the cloud. The survey also found that only 8% of survey respondents said they are fully cloud. Overall, 79% of respondents feel that migrating from on-premise workflows to cloud-based is “important or very important”.
Key considerations for M&E cloud migration.
“A lot of people do a lift and shift by just moving everything from on-prem to the cloud and think that all their problems are solved, which is simply not true,” explains James Gibson, CEO, Ortana. He adds that companies should not “persist the same problems and challenges of locating content, organizing content, and duplication to the cloud. So, it’s important to have a strategy.”
Nick Pearce, Founder, Scaling with Scarcity, responds with his thoughts on migrating to the cloud. “Factors to include is what sort of commercial model is being used and align workflows being used so you don’t get any surprises in terms of bills. Also, there is a requirement to understand what your exit is from a cloud platform. If you don’t know how to leave a cloud platform and if they got you by the data, you really need to understand that’s not a good situation for your organization and the portability of your content.”
Pearce advises, “Understand where your data is, how you get it back, and the cost.”
Common mistakes when migrating to the cloud.
When asked about common mistakes made by M&E companies migrating to the cloud, Jordan Maltby, CEO, of Shadow Magic, a 100% cloud post-production house, says, “Not thinking about a long-term solution. They might think ‘I just need to get this archived’ so they go to what they think is the cheapest or most reputable solution. Then, they get locked-in in terms of both price and locality.”
Jordan Maltby adds some companies will go with hyperscalers like AWS but then suddenly realize that they’re locked into high costs. Meanwhile, in an effort to cut costs, companies will select “more budget or regional solutions.”
“The problem there is you can archive your entire media library to US East and then suddenly your organization becomes national,” explains Maltby. “Or your organization becomes international. In a land where we are shooting more and more remote productions, you’re kind of setting yourself up for failure by locking yourself into something that might be fast in New York, but what about on the West Coast, what about in Europe? That could be a soft form of vendor lock in.”
The benefits of media in the cloud are clear.
Survey respondents were clear that there are many benefits of having media assets in the cloud. The top four selected were the acceleration of global collaboration, being able to work with the best people regardless of location, money savings, and being able to better meet deadlines.
Storj is uniquely qualified to handle today’s evolving cloud-based media workflows with the distributed cloud. Storj is a globally distributed network of storage that enables global access with a single upload. Storj is optimized to work with large files – such as large media files – and is consistently fast. And because the Storj network consists of spare capacity, it is up to 90% less cost than AWS and reduces carbon emissions by 83%.
Get more insights in the report 5 Ways the distributed cloud solves hybrid media workflow issues (no wall). Or visit storj.io to learn how Storj is making it easy for media production and post to operate globally with cloud or hybrid environments. To learn more about global collaboration for M&E, visit https://www.storj.io/solutions/global-cloud-storage-and-file-access.
