Media and entertainment organizations are among the world’s biggest consumers of data storage. Given the boom in content creation seen in recent years, this is hardly surprising, and according to industry estimates, it’s driving a storage technology and services market that will grow from more than $10 billion in value last year to $28.5 billion by 2032.
One of the big challenges facing M&E organizations is where to keep all of their data. There is a wide range of options out there, from legacy on-premises technologies to outsourced public cloud services—an approach that has built huge momentum. In the last 20 years, the likes of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have become extraordinarily successful providers of cloud-based storage and today, the market is booming: Having reached over $108 billion last year, it is expected to grow to more than $660 billion by 2032.
The impact of this trend on M&E tech spend has been profound, underscoring the growing focus of the cloud. For many, this has resulted in the adoption of an “all-in” cloud strategy, where legacy on-premises systems have been removed in favor of a fully outsourced model.
Dark Clouds
While the benefits of the public cloud are well documented, some growing cost and performance concerns are causing many organizations to rethink their approach and pivot to a hybrid model where the cloud is used alongside on-premises infrastructure technologies.
More specifically, the fees charged by some major public cloud providers to access data assets, such as video files, are becoming prohibitively expensive. This problem can be exacerbated by usage-based cloud pricing models, which can fluctuate significantly and make it difficult for users to produce accurate forecasts.
For those organizations with a heavy commitment to cloud storage, paying someone to host the data is just part of the picture.
Then there are the problems associated with limited workflow integration. For instance, while advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools are often available in the cloud, it’s not always easy to integrate them within the cloud storage setup required for M&E-specific workflows. Some industry experts have also raised concerns about asset control and ownership, given the outsourced model shifts the emphasis away from M&E businesses and toward their cloud supplier.
The various areas of concern around the public cloud market haven’t gone unnoticed by industry regulators. This time last year, for example, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the supply of public cloud infrastructure services. The issues of most concern included the egress fees charged to move data out of the cloud, discounts to incentivize customers to use only one cloud provider and technical barriers to switching, which may prevent customers from being able to switch between different clouds or use more than one provider. The CMA is expected to conclude its investigation next April, at which point it will become clear if further action is required.
It’s a Hybrid World
So, what’s the alternative? For many M&E IT leaders, the answer lies in the reintroduction of on-premises storage architecture as part of a hybrid strategy. Once considered the “poor relation” of cloud, on-premises technologies have advanced significantly in recent years to the point where the best solutions can match and even improve on the cost and performance levels offered by public cloud providers.
This approach gives M&E organizations a lot of scope for innovation. For example, the object storage technologies used by the likes of Amazon S3 are available via equivalent on-premise solutions. These are extremely well-suited for storing and managing vast amounts of unstructured data, making them ideal for scalable media files, backups and archives with easy retrieval and metadata tagging.
Organizations can also implement advanced AI tools on-premises to deliver storage management and end-user benefits. A hybrid approach also allows M&E companies to tailor storage solutions to high-performance workflows, such as rendering and post-production, without latency issues. Crucially, on-premises storage offers direct control over system specifications to support these demanding processes. Add the savings made from reduced or eliminated egress costs, and it adds up to a compelling argument where, for M&E business, cloud has a redefined role.
These are quickly becoming defining requirements. According to one recent study, 42% of companies in the U.S. “are considering or already have moved at least half of their cloud-based workloads back to on-premises infrastructures.” If this trend is replicated in the M&E industry, hybrid strategies will play an increasingly important role as organizations look to drive maximum value from their infrastructure spend.
