NEEDHAM, Mass.—Spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 14.9% year over year in the first quarter of 2023 (1Q23) to $21.5 billion, according to the International Data Corporation. 

IDC’s “Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment” found that spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outpace the non-cloud segment with the latter declining 0.9% in 1Q23 to $13.8 billion. 

The cloud infrastructure segment saw unit demand down 11.4%, but average selling prices (ASPs) grew 29.7%, driven by inflationary pressure as well as a higher concentration of GPU-accelerated systems being deployed by cloud service providers.

Long term, IDC predicts spending on cloud infrastructure to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2% over the 2022-2027 forecast period, reaching $153.0 billion in 2027 and accounting for 69.0% of total compute and storage infrastructure spend. 

According to IDC, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 14.9% year over year in Q1 2023 to $21.5 billion.

The IDC tracker also reported that spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $15.7 billion in the quarter, increasing 22.5% compared to a year ago. IDC expects to see continuous strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure, which is expected to surpass non-cloud infrastructure in spending in 2023. The dedicated cloud infrastructure segment declined 1.5% year over year in 1Q23 to $5.8 billion. Of the total dedicated cloud infrastructure, 44.5% was deployed on customer premises during the quarter.

For 2023, IDC forecasts cloud infrastructure spending to grow 7.3% compared to 2022 to $96.4 billion – a slight improvement from the prior outlook for the year of 6.9%. 

Non-cloud infrastructure is expected to decline 6.3% to $60.4 billion. Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 8.4% year over year to $68.0 billion for the full year, while spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 4.8% to $28.4 billion for the full year. The subdued growth forecast reflects the expectation that the market will face significant macroeconomic headwinds and curbed demand with cloud staying positive due to the drive for modernization, opex focus, and continued growth in digital consumer services demand, while non-cloud contracts as enterprise customers shift towards capital preservation.

"Cloud infrastructure spending remains resilient in the face of macroeconomic challenges," said Kuba Stolarski, research vice president for IDC's Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and Technologies Group. "However, the segment is grappling with substantial price hikes and Q1 marked the second consecutive quarter of declining system unit demand. Although the overall outlook for the year remains positive, its growth hinges on the expectation that volume will drive it. Prolonged stagnation in demand could pose a significant obstacle to growth for the remainder of this year."

On a geographic basis, year-over-year spending on cloud infrastructure in 1Q23 increased in all regions except Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) (impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war), China, and Canada. Spending in CEE declined 27.1% year over year, while China was down 20.4%, and Canada declined 4.9%. 

Latin America, the United States, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), Japan, and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC) grew the most at 39.2%, 34.3%, 33.5%, 17.1% and 16.4% year over year, respectively, the IDC said. Western Europe grew at 7.4% year over year. For 2023, cloud infrastructure spending is expected to grow in all regions except CEE and Canada, with Latin America expected to grow fastest at 16.1%. All other regions (APeJC, Canada, Japan, Latin America, USA, and Western Europe) are expected to post annual growth in the 0-15% range.

Shared cloud infrastructure will account for 72.0% of the total cloud amount with an 11.9% CAGR and reaching $110.1 billion in 2027. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure will grow at a CAGR of 9.6% to $42.9 billion. Spending on non-cloud infrastructure will grow at a 1.3% CAGR, reaching $68.6 billion in 2027. Spending by service providers on compute and storage infrastructure is expected to grow at a 10.6% CAGR, reaching $148.2 billion in 2027.

More information is available here. 

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Data storage provider XenData has announced the CX-10 Plus, a cloud archive appliance with local backup to LTO data tape. 

The appliance connects to a local network and provides a fast gateway to unlimited cloud object storage, the company explained. Content written to the cloud is mirrored to LTO data cartridges creating a local backup copy for greatly enhanced data protection. This saves money as it is an alternative to paying for geo-replication from the cloud provider. And if there is a need to move to a different cloud provider, files can be restored from the LTO backup, avoiding expensive egress fees.

“The CX-10 Plus has two key benefits,” explained Dr. Phil Storey, XenData CEO. “Creating a local synchronized copy of every file written to the cloud gives peace of mind. And the Appliance easily pays for itself by minimizing cloud storage fees.”

The appliance is optimized for media archives allowing users to play video files directly from the cloud. Furthermore, it has proven integration with many complementary media applications including media asset management systems. It provides a fast connection to cloud object storage by using multi-threaded archive and restore operations, even when transferring a single large video file, the company said. 

The CX-10 Plus supports multiple clouds including Amazon Web Services S3, Azure blob storage, Wasabi S3 and Seagate Lyve object storage. It supports multiple cloud storage tiers including AWS Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Glacier and Azure Hot, Cool and Archive tiers.

Content written to the cloud is mirrored to LTO data cartridges creating a local backup copy. The Appliance manages up to two external LTO drives or an LTO autoloader and it includes a 14 TB disk cache which is used to implement the LTO backup, as follows: 

• All archived files are first written to the CX-10 Plus internal 14 TB disk cache from where they are immediately uploaded to the designated cloud storage.
• The archived files are retained on the cache for a defined retention period, typically a day.
• Every few hours the files are synchronized to LTO creating a mirror copy of the file-folder structure that has been archived to the cloud.

The CX-10 Plus will be available in September 2022.  Prices start at $11,950, excluding the managed LTO drive or autoloader.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Data storage solution provider has launched an object storage S3 interface for its entire range of on-premise active archives that provide long-term secure storage on LTO data tape cartridges. 

The launch transforms the XenData archive systems into private cloud data repositories that compete with public cloud storage services such as AWS Glacier and the Archive Tier of Azure object storage. The S3 interface is enabled by a simple software upgrade.

Dr Phil Storey, XenData CEO, explained that “our new private cloud solutions keep the attractive aspects of LTO on-premises archives which include cost effective scalability and adds the ease of distributed access which has traditionally been associated with public cloud storage.”

For active archives with capacities above 100 TB, storage systems based on LTO data tape libraries have an attractive total cost of ownership that is significantly lower than public cloud object storage, XenData reported.  

An S3 enabled XenData LTO archive provides restore times of around 2 minutes which is suitable for most infrequently accessed data repositories. And when compared to AWS Glacier or Azure Archive Tier object storage, the XenData private cloud solution provides higher performance at a lower cost, free of any egress charges, the company reported. 

The new S3 interface allows remote access to a XenData LTO archive from anywhere worldwide using secure HTTPS. It also supports replication of one LTO archive to a second LTO system at another location which can even be on a different continent. 

In addition to the S3 interface, XenData launches Global Sync, a synchronization service that links multiple S3 enabled LTO archives, creating a single global file system accessible anywhere worldwide. 

As soon as a file is archived to LTO at one location, it becomes available as a stub file within the global file system. When a user makes a change by writing, overwriting or deleting a file, that change is propagated to all locations. This provides a consistent up-to-date set of files across the entire distributed organization. 

When files are restored from another location, they are transferred directly using peer to peer multi-threaded HTTPS which delivers secure fast file transfers. The Global Sync service uses a cloud database, but the files themselves are never stored in public cloud object storage, avoiding cloud storage and egress fees. Furthermore, because the new service only synchronizes file system metadata, it requires minimal Internet bandwidth, XenData reported. 

Migrating from on-prem to cloud storage can drive the inexperienced user to new sets of knowledge well outside those they would encounter when managing in-house storage. The most apparent differentiators are that in-cloud storage users pay on a per-consumption basis—usually monthly or at some incremental time-based period—and by the type of store they send their data into. Both conditions are set by the agreement established with the cloud service provider (Fig. 1). Scrutinized or scrutiny 

Definition-wise, cloud storage is a service model whereby data in one or more locations is transmitted to and stored in a remote storage system. Cloud storage components are managed by the cloud storage provider. Responsibilities of the storage provider’s solution include maintenance, backup and availability to the user. The latter, availability, is often stipulated by agreement, sometimes called a contract or service level agreement (SLA).

Storage availability has two components: a time-to-retrieve (recover) data factor and a cost-to-store factor. Usually, these two are tied together. For example, if the user puts its data into deep storage and does not depend on that data for routine (daily) applications, then the cost is much lower per unit gigabyte than for sustained, readily accessible, low-latency/fast-recovery storage applications—as in editing, rendering or compositing. 

VIRTUALIZING INFRASTRUCTURE

When storage is based on an infrastructure—which includes accessible interfaces, near-instant elasticity and scalability, multitenancy and metered resources—the storage is usually cloud-based and “virtualized.” Meter resources, also known as pay-per-use, are those offered with potentially unlimited storage capacity resources. Commonly found in enterprise-grade IT environments, this application has moved from a flat-fee (cost-per-month) world to a pay-for-the-use fee structure.

A familiar structure for pay-per-use is Apple’s iTunes model, the “sample for free and pay for what you want to ‘own’” (so to speak). Obviously in cloud storage you will not “own” the physical platform that holds your data, but you will pay for what you use based upon its structure, endurance/availability, its accessibility and the length of time you utilize the storage space.

LOGICAL STORAGE POOLS

A cloud service provider will manage and maintain the data that was transferred to the cloud by the user. Data is usually distributed across disparate, commodity storage systems. Data storage topologies may be on-premises, in a third-party managed data center or in a public or private cloud.

In an on-prem environment, for various reasons, data may be structured in logical pools. In such a shared environment, storage pools are capacity aggregated and formed from various physical storage resources. Pools may vary in size, yield variable but conglomerate performance (IOPS), and provide collective improvements like cohesive management and aggregate data protection. Logical pools are usually provisioned by administrators via management interfaces. A cloud infrastructure generally utilizes this logical form of storage.

RAW AND COOKED—LAKES AND PUDDLES

Storage pools may be equated to a data lake, although there are differences between these two derivatives. The data lake is a storage repository holding a large and vast quantity of unprocessed raw data known as source or atomic data. A giant bit-bucket where data is pushed without specific organization is a form of data lake. Processed data is, although less often, referred to as “cooked” data.

Raw data may not necessarily be called “information” since there needs to be an abstraction or applicational use, accomplished through processing, elevating its worthiness and value from raw to informational purpose. A data puddle is a single-purpose data mart built on big data technology, which is essentially an extract from a data lake.

ON-DEMAND STORAGE

No one likes to pay for things that they don’t need or use. In the cloud, storage services are provided on demand with elastic (increasing and decreasing) capacity as needed, when needed. Opting for cloud storage eliminates the requirements to buy, manage, depreciate and maintain storage infrastructures that reside on-prem, (Fig. 2).

Cloud models have radically driven down the cost-per-gigabyte of storage. However, cloud storage providers, also known as a managed service provider (MSP), may add different sets of operating expenses vs. those in owned, on-prem storage. Added OpEx costs could make certain cloud-based technologies more expensive, depending upon whether or not the equation considers how or when the storage is used. Look for options when selecting and architecting your cloud storage solution. 

THOUGHTFUL ACCESS SHUFFLING

Cloud providers concoct many useful and appropriate names for their various services, utilities and architectures. As of 2021, Azure and AWS each offer 200+ different products and services. Without naming anything specific, the concept of shuffling data storage sets to appropriately price and utilize varying locations in the cloud is a topic growing in popularity.

Optimizing storage costs, without burdening the user, employs automated methodologies that might be termed “thoughtful.” Otherwise called tiered storage, such architectures are not new, especially for ground-based (on-prem) facilities. In non-cloud datacenters, the practice of using high-performance storage for editing, compositing or rendering, where accessibility and speed is essential, is commonplace. This is known as Tier 1 storage.

A large SAN or Fibre Channel data store can be a costly proposition. Not all data workflows need this capability, so less-needed data is typically pushed to a Tier 2 (mid-level) environment. Archive data, which is seldom used or set aside for protection or redundancy (longterm) is known as Tier 3, where it may live on tape or object storage or both. Some may also use Tier 3 as that single occurrence where data is pushed to the cloud (known as deep archive) knowing it won’t require fast retrieval anytime soon.

CUTTING COSTS BY INTELLIGENCE

Early in cloud storage history, moving data around to different data containers (buckets) was accomplished manually and by specific direction of the user. While there may have been cost advantages to deeper storage, the labor effort was not advantageous to those early cloud storage users.

Things have changed over time as varying new services, increasing volumes of data and acceptance (i.e., trust) of the cloud provider by the user continually improve.

Accomplished by learning elements of data usage patterns, unattended cloud storage migration between cloud storage tiers was introduced in the 2017–18 timeframe. By automatically moving data between cloud stores, users and the cloud providers gained new advantages. With simple recognition of access periods for data, cloud providers would shift dormant storage to a “deeper” level without ever having to contact the user/owner of that data.

Users typically authorize automatic migration when signing up or establishing a particular SLA. Actions might be via user interface or APIs associated to work orders or activities. Adding intelligence to this practice has evolved over time. Intelligent tiering gives cloud service providers opportunities to expand archive tiers to other levels, which in turn improves the cost structures accordingly.

APPLICABILITY

When engaging cloud storage services, users should look into automated options and evaluate, via cloud-provided models, the value of tiered and automated storage electives. For large projects extending over months to years, one set of guidelines might be appropriate. Smaller projects utilizing shared data sets across multiple production activities may yield different answers.

Experiment with the numbers, frequencies, volumes and applicability to a particular workflow before going down any cloud storage path. Don’t let the “I’m not paying attention to this” excuse be the reason for higher storage costs, which then provide no improved results.

Karl Paulsen is chief technology officer at Diversified and a frequent contributor to TV Tech in storage, IP and cloud technologies. Contact him at kpaulsen@diversifiedus.com. 

If you’re thinking about shifting storage to the cloud or if expanding the local storage area network (SAN) makes better sense, knowing the impacts of both options is an important study in capabilities and cost management. Even if you think you know what cloud storage might cost, perhaps because you’ve done it before, be sure you’re updated on all the recent facts, variables and combinations of services before making a move in either direction. Cloud services, like SAN storage, is an evolving and frequently changing environment. 

ALWAYS A CHALLENGE

Expanding storage localized at the facility or in a cooperative datacenter has always been a challenge—add in the cloud options and you have much to understand. Selecting the type of storage has a direct reflection on its cost—either way. The storage performance desired is directly related to the volume of work activities and processing speed (the I/O) that you will need for the selected storage architecture and workflow.

For example, if you need to render a large set of animation clips, you will want fast access cache-like storage that can handle the throughput from the render engines without delay or latency. However, the life of that content, once rendered on that storage type, is relatively short compared to the volume size and length of retention for the entire set of finished, rendered files. Workflows will mandate migration of in-process render farm storage to secondary, longer-term storage to keep flows consistently moving from render engine to holding storage.

Costs for local storage are fairly predictable. For the cloud it becomes harder to cost and difficult to plan for. While cloud is fast to create, the total costs can go through the roof if not well-analyzed and controlled from the start.

CLOUD STORAGE COST BREAKDOWN

Cloud storage is a bit like going to the smorgasbord; many items are à la carte. Fees include monthly access, retention time, storage volume and/or the use of inherent capabilities of the store itself. Fig.1 depicts storage services and on-ramps to cloud services (via software-defined WAN) whose services may include storage access or may stand as separate items. 

Use it once and quickly—a short term “put it there and take it back out”—and you’ll have one price. “Put it there and leave it there” for a lengthy period of time—another price. Need rapid access to something you placed into a long-term holding pen (an “archive”)? You can watch previously expected low-budget costs to take off like SpaceX launching multiple satellites one at a time.

Storage types and the services available are common cloud cost factors. Each services menu may have different parameters. Simple, elastic, deep (e.g., cold or “glacier”) vs. high-performance, regional or multiregional physical locations each have different cost factors. Choices become decisions that the user needs to make, each having a differential base on near- or long-term requirements, and, in turn, are reflected in each cost.

Costs vary based on where the storage is located; that is, where the physical data centers are geographically. Global replication and access to the storage, which gives lower latency and another degree of safety, is great if needed. If offices are scattered all over the planet with needs for shared file access, the added costs may not be as painful compared to the work lost in having to wait hours to days for file recovery.

Capacity, based on monthly consumption, definitely affects cloud storage budgets. Should your storage needs be layered (tiered), how much is placed into which bucket and how many copies of each bucket are needed for protection and/or accelerated access will impact costs accordingly. Local, hot or redundant storage will be priced at “so many pennies per gigabyte” for a set amount of storage (e.g., the first 100 TB) on a “per month” basis. Incremental increases won’t see much change, but 10x increases will see a suitable cost decrease measuring around a few points (100ths of cents) per 100 TB.

DATA DELETION—IT ISN’T FREE

Just because you paid to put storage in the cloud, and/or to keep it in the cloud for some period, doesn’t mean you can just “get rid of it” without incurring a fee. Surprise! Sometimes the cloud vendor’s “hook” is to let you use their buckets for a few cents per 100 TB per month. The shocker comes when you either want it back—now; or if you don’t need it any longer and you want to dump it. Expect a bill to dump the storage based on your agreement.

Data at rest fetches one price, but dead data for deletion brings another. If you’ve paid to put the data into deep, extended storage (usually at a much lower cost than rapidly available recoverable storage), the exit strategy will likely be different than if you paid a higher price for rapidly accessible storage, took the data out and never put anything back in its “formerly” empty space.

Contract terms are key to storage costs from time-zero to time-end. Variables are based on volume, accessibility, minimum retention policy and more.

POLICIES, PROVISIONING—AUDIT AND MOVEMENT

Thinly provisioned policies or confusingly complicated requirements should raise red flags. Before signing, verify the service level agreement (SLA); e.g., how it predefines maximum capacities for specific storage instances. There’s no standardization for cloud SLAs, but there can be large variances based upon multiple factors including short-term and long-term associations (Fig. 2). 

Audit your cloud service billing to be certain the policies are followed and that your own needs don’t over or under exceed those requirements. Use available monitoring tools included in the service offering.

Be observant of cloud data movement and minimize it wherever practical. Public cloud storage should not be your primary backup, unless of course all your activities are 100% cloud-based. If using a hybrid cloud/local storage solution, take advantage of data minimization features. Deduplication can save costs by eliminating duplicate, redundant files before the data moves from on-prem to the cloud.

COMPLIANCE AND SECURITY ASSURANCE

Cloud computing widens attack surfaces in multiple dimensions. Know which side is responsible for security controls and assurances related to operations, carriage, storage and protection of the data entrusted to those services. Cloud providers usually take responsibility for physical security, business continuity, network security and disaster recovery (DR). Other security controls are likely the responsibility of the consumer.

What can or cannot be moved to the cloud is dictated by security and regulatory requirements guided by a raft of state, federal and international regulations. GDRP, the SOX Act, HIPPA (in medical) and other rights and acts can be complicated. If you’re not sure or willing to take the steps to figure them out, your better choice might be to keep your data stored locally. Don’t second-guess the value of your assets; be informed.

FACTORS GALORE

Add into the cloud vs. SAN (local) storage stew things like backup, recovery, automation, support, vendor prescriptions and lock-in, plus manageability and reliability, and you have a set of concoctions that just might make you think again about where, how and into “what” you place your most precious data.

You should also evaluate multicloud storage agendas. In this scenario, it’s critical to your business operations to determine precisely what data will be managed and where; how it will be stored; and how that data is transported from ground-to-cloud, cloud-to-cloud and back to ground again. Egress or access points may actually be bundled in the contract or the services might be discounted in order to offset third-party costs for access.

Don’t take strategies for storage, whether on the ground or in the cloud, lightly. Organizations expect consistency, uninterrupted performance and unprecedented reliability at a manageable cost. In an owner-provided on-prem SAN storage solution or an all-in-the-cloud alternative, be sure you know the expectations. Hire an expert outside entity to guide you through the marshlands ahead of making that final choice.

Karl Paulsen is CTO for Diversified. He can be reached at kpaulsen@diversifiedus.com.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Data storage solutions provider XenData has introduced the Multi-Site Sync Service for cloud object storage, which is expected to be released later this spring. Multi-Site Sync will create a global file system that can be accessed worldwide via XenData Cloud File Gateways.

The XenData gateways are optimized for video files, supporting partial file restore and streaming. Each gateway manages a local disk volume that caches frequently accessed files. The XenData service can scale to 2 billion files and has unlimited cloud storage and up to 256 TB of local disk cache at each location. The service allows for global file sharing across multiple facilities.

A synchronized gateway runs on a physical or virtual Windows machine and allows the global file system to be accessed on each local network as a standard share using SMB, NFS and FTP network protocols. When a file is created on one gateway, it appears as a stub file within all other gateways.

Multi-Site Sync supports Amazon Web Services S3, Hot and Cool tiers of Azure Blob Storage and Wasabi S3 cloud object storage services. It also allows for simultaneous use of multiple cloud storage providers within the global file system. Each gateway uses multipart HTTPS with checksum verification for secure connection to the cloud storage.

XenData will also offer two edge appliances with the gateway software: the CX-10, a 1RU rack-mount appliance and the X1 compact unit.

XenData plans to release Multi-Site Sync in May at a price of $150 per month.

For more information, visit www.xendata.com.  

WASHINGTON—As we begin a new decade, the media archive landscape is going through significant changes. While the traditional requirement to preserve content has always existed, new ways to deliver content offer greater potential for monetization now than at any time in the past. New technologies and vendors have also arrived, promising new capabilities and lower costs. And of course, file sizes and shooting ratios continue to increase.

It is clear that the cloud will play a major role in the future of media archiving. Private cloud solutions, where the organization’s infrastructure is shared among multiple groups, departments, stations or regions, are used heavily today. Public cloud solutions, from providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others, have compelling services that offer low up-front costs but a continuous operational expense that usually increases over time. Hybrid solutions that incorporate both public and private cloud, may enable customers to utilize the strengths of both private and public clouds.

It is important to note that there are a wide variety of companies offering cloud-based infrastructure, with each one providing unique products and services. Some may offer cloud-based processing, cloud storage, content processing, and machine learning services, while others may focus on fewer services. In addition, their storage tiers and pricing structures may vary widely. Differences in storage and egress costs, retrieval responsiveness, as well as the number and locations of their data centers are all factors that may be considered as part of the decision to select one vendor over another.

THE (GRADUAL) RISE OF CLOUD STORAGE

Public cloud technology has now reached the point where almost every media organization is using it in some form as part of their daily operations. While the majority of media archives are kept on-premise today, some organizations have begun to rely on public cloud storage as part of their archive solution. This can take several forms, such as:

Primary archive storage: Archived media files are stored on public cloud storage. When content is required by the organization’s users or systems, it is restored from the public cloud.

Business continuity: Similar to primary archive storage, archived media files are stored on public cloud storage. However, in this case copies of the media files are also stored on-premise and the public cloud copies are retained as a backup in case the primary storage or location is not accessible or usable.

Collaboration: Selected archived media files are stored on public cloud storage, so that they can be accessed by remote users, external contributors, or business systems.

In addition to cloud storage, some organizations are using the public cloud to host the asset or archive management application, reducing or eliminating the need to deploy servers in their data center(s). In addition to the elimination of CAPEX (capital expenditures) costs, this can also give them the ability to scale their computing resources up and down as needed in a way that would be cost-prohibitive on premise.

THE ROLE OF AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

Almost every organization has a significant amount of content that has little or no metadata. Artificial intelligence and machine learning systems offer an automated way to extract metadata from files, through services such as speech-to-text, facial recognition, object recognition, and sentiment analysis.

The accuracy of these services varies, but with companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft investing heavily in these technologies, it is likely that we will see major strides in their effectiveness in this decade. Consumer adoption of products using speech recognition and visual recognition is a clear indicator of the appetite for these technologies. In early 2019, Amazon informally announced that 100 million Alexa-powered devices had been sold globally, and NPR/Edison estimates that there are almost 120 million smart speakers in the United States alone. The use of devices like these, along with visual recognition tools used by OTT and social media applications, will continue to expand the size of the “data lakes” that help to refine these technologies.

Automated metadata extraction will enhance the value of media archives. By enriching archived assets with metadata, it is now possible to begin to understand what value they may have. The assets can now be exposed to both internal and external users who may be interested in using them. This will lead to the development of new tools and channels to enable consumers, companies and other organizations to search, browse, and purchase content directly from the owner/creator.

MANAGING ASSETS, NOT JUST ARCHIVING FILES

To maximize the potential of the modern media archive, asset and archive management systems need to do more than just control storage systems. They need to understand file formats, metadata and workflows, so that they can get content to the right place, at the right time, in the right format. Business rules can be used to determine the right format, wrapper and bitrate to be used for the archived asset and for any copies that may be created as it is moved through the facility. By storing metadata and the asset together in formats that can be read by other vendors, these systems can also make sure that the content is portable and future-proofed.

Asset and archive management systems are critical to the integration of public cloud storage, not only because they provide the interfaces between that storage and the customer’s production and/ or distribution systems, but also because they can manage hybrid storage environments. These environments may have a mix of on premise and cloud storage, or even multiple cloud services, and moving or migrating content between the different systems must be automated and seamless. The management systems should also provide tools that predict future costs as the cloud storage usage increases.

Solutions such as Masstech’s Kumulate can provide the tools to easily manage these processes and to ensure that your organization is ready for the next decade and beyond.

Savva Mueller is vice president, product management and marketing for Masstech.

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