FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of respondents saying they plan to migrate to a horizontally integrated approach to their assets and media management.
The global survey, “State of Media Archiving,” found a desire to move away from fragmented, multigeneration systems as the ability to scale and derive greater efficiencies is impeded by integration costs, data silos and inefficient collaboration—the main drivers for the shift.
“Our findings underscore what many in the industry already feel: traditional, siloed media archiving systems can’t keep up, and workflows must evolve to meet new operational realities, Barry Evans, Pixitmedia senior vice president of product development, said. “With data and content libraries expanding across both traditional and digital-native segments, migrating to a unified, horizontally integrated approach enables companies to streamline operations, support collaboration across regions and position themselves for sustainable growth in an increasingly content-driven market.”
A total of 330 M&E professionals were questioned for the inaugural Pixitmedia survey. Forty-five percent of respondents said automation, metadata enrichment and third-party integration were key workflow challenges faced by their organizations.
In response, 76% of organizations plan to increase technology budgets over the next 12 months to modernize archiving capabilities to support content-intensive operations, the survey found.
As of 2025, only 6% of M&E companies have fully migrated to a single-platform approach to media archiving. Ten percent of digital service providers and 7% of houses of worship are the lead early adopters, while TV and video broadcasters remain the slowest to make the shift, with just 3% completed and 10% reporting no migration plans.
Adoption intent, however, is strong. Seventy-five percent of houses of worship are currently evaluating ROI and business benefits, and all sports franchises surveyed plan to migrate within the next 24 months, the survey found.
Hybrid deployments continue to dominate across M&E strategies, preferred by 42% of respondents. Looking ahead, 40% expect hybrid setups to remain their preferred configuration in 2026. Adoption varies by sector, with 69% of houses of worship and 58% of enterprise video teams leading the way. Currently, one-quarter of respondents favor on-premises deployment, a figure expected to rise to 31% among those planning to host media archiving workflows in-house over the next 12 months.
AI-driven media archiving is now a top priority across nearly every M&E segment. Up to 39% of studios and 46% of enterprises are embedding AI/ML to enhance content operations. A total of 45% of respondents cited operational productivity as the primary benefit of AI/ML integration in media archiving workflows, with metadata enrichment, automated search and deduplication the most in-demand AI capabilities, it found.
Pixitmedia is the media division of Datacore Software. It provides nearline and active archive solutions, as well as workflow applications.
Survey findings are available on the company’s website.
