Most of us would not be surprised to learn that the media and entertainment industry is expanding quickly. In fact, the market is set to grow by $10.4 billion between 2021 and 2025.
As a result, more content and even more data are quickly entering the space, much of which is hosted on streaming platforms. The past few years have proven that streaming platforms are an integral part of media distribution. Still, this shift towards streaming is creating a strain on production companies as they not only have to keep up with the delivery of the content, but also reimagine data storage and management to keep pace with the industry's growth and increased offerings. It’s never been more critical for content to be delivered securely, quickly and reliably to meet consumer needs.
Now is the time for media and entertainment organizations to revamp their IT storage infrastructure as the need for flexible, accessible and secure storage has arrived. Over the next few years, a cloud revolution will give companies the tools necessary to stay competitive by enabling agile and secure remote collaboration to meet consumer demands for instantaneous, quality content.
Enabling Easy Collaboration Across the Globe
TV and movie production today is naturally distributed—content is shot all over the world, not just in Hollywood. In the current distributed work environment, production teams need to have the ability to quickly store, access and transfer data from different geographic locations.
This is where cloud storage becomes vital. Storing data on-premises can be expensive and inconvenient as it requires organizations to open on-premises data centers in multiple locations. Moving to a cloud storage solution enables companies to run data centers around the world for more streamlined and secure access to production files and content.
Archiving Footage with the Cloud
In our digital-first entertainment world, on-demand streaming services enable companies across industries - for example, sports - to monetize their archives and earn revenue off of large content volumes. But today’s consumers expect increasingly higher resolutions, such as 4K and 8K, which require much more data with easy, reliable and secure access to footage. Beyond viewing, these large files must be easily accessible and transferrable to streamline the editing and production process.
On-premises storage solutions are often quickly overwhelmed by these large volumes of stored footage. Organizations can address many of these challenges by moving to the cloud with its scalable nature and accessibility. Cloud storage also protects video archives from potential loss or bad actors as a reliable backup solution for long-term protection.
Enhancing Data Security with Cloud Backup
You may have heard reports that the production team of Toy Story 2 almost lost the entirety of their movie footage due to accidental deletion, highlighting the importance of data backup in the media and entertainment industry. While having on-premises storage may be a more familiar approach for some, production companies need quick and easy access to stored data while also keeping it protected against possible security threats—whether internal or external, accidental or malicious.
By backing up content to the cloud, organizations are able to diversify backups and avoid having a central location for all of its footage, ultimately mitigating the cost of a security breach. This prevents hackers from accessing all company data storage locations and enables organizations to continue functioning during a breach, reducing downtime. It also allows teams to quickly retrieve footage and archives should they lose any in a transfer or location change.
This strategy often takes the form of a multi-cloud approach that combines public and private clouds to avoid vendor lock-in, minimize expenses and optimize performance. While businesses utilize multi-cloud strategies for a variety of reasons, the media industry, specifically, must be ready to utilize multi-cloud to protect valuable content assets over time.
The Future of Streaming Tech
Over the coming years, we will see cloud become the home for all media production, with all assets—movie scripts, images and more—ingested straight into the cloud. We will also see more production applications move to the cloud, helping to streamline collaboration for teams with all of their tools in one place.
The cloud enables media and entertainment companies to not only address consumer demands now, but also to scale to continue to allow remote collaboration, archive years of footage and provide protection for the valuable content these studios produce.
As we continue to see the growing popularity and availability of streaming services, media production organizations need to optimize their cloud strategies to foster a future of streaming platforms that delivers exactly what consumers expect—quality and convenience.
