From Chaos to Clarity: Transforming Media Workflows With Cloud-First Storage

By Dominic Harland, CEO of GB Labs 

Media organizations have come to a crossroads regarding media storage. Some need greater capacity, others need more flexibility to support their post-COVID work practices, and still others require greater predictability of their ongoing costs. Regardless of where a company is at, all organizations have grown tired of investing in short-term solutions that, at best, supply a bandage when they really need a cure.

Many organizations looking to build out a more forward-looking storage strategy have been hobbled by the uncertainty of maintaining their on-prem solutions or moving to the cloud.  Some teams have experimented with cloud solutions and love the ability to access media from anywhere. Still, they were unhappy with many other aspects of the solution, including performance, workflow, security, availability, and ongoing operational costs that were not clearly defined before installation. 

Many performance and workflow issues result from poorly architected cloud solutions, where end-user workflows depend on moving data from place to place, transferring data to the cloud, and copying it out again. This approach creates more issues than value for modern media production. It is inherently time-consuming and inefficient, draining performance and causing unnecessary data duplication. In generating multiple copies of data, organizations risk losing control of their master files. This chaotic model eliminates the progress that digital media production provides.

More recently, though, media organizations have discovered that they don’t have to sacrifice the performance they expect of on-premises storage when shifting to the cloud and its benefits. Advances in cloud-first media storage are bringing unprecedented flexibility to their artists and editors, on-prem-like performance, and global file access with enterprise-grade security. As a result, media organizations have begun to implement cloud storage that makes files available instantly, allowing users to mount drives and work as if on local systems. The best cloud solutions provide new levels of security and auditability, ensuring content stays protected in flight and at rest.

This new trend in NAS-like cloud storage enables artists and editors working worldwide to collaborate on the same content concurrently as if in the same office while working with all of the creative and content management applications creatives have used for years. Producers are taking advantage of detailed analytics and audit reporting, while IT managers gain peace of mind with sophisticated options for ensuring security and resiliency. They’re leveraging the flexibility and scalability of the cloud without compromising on-prem performance and workflows.