A Storj survey of 500 media and entertainment (M&E) leaders in the US and UK examined industry trends, opinions, and opportunities (see full report - no wall). 72% of respondents said they agree or strongly agree that media production work is becoming more remote, more globally collaborative, and respondents are open to leveraging resources and team members around the world.
Storj also had the opportunity to interview technology partners at IBC2024 for their compelling thoughts on the rapidly evolving M&E industry, remote work, global collaboration, sustainability initiatives, challenges faced, moving to the cloud, and the benefits of the distributed cloud storage architecture.
This article highlights Storj partner insights on an industry in flux and examines how distributed cloud storage is the transformative technology for this move to remote media production.
Multi-site and remote post-production is the new norm.
“Yes, multi-site and remote production and post-production is really the new norm,” says Floyd Christofferson, VP Product Marketing, Hammerspace. “There are a variety of reasons and one is the availability of talent. I might have a post-production facility in a metropolitan area but as my business grows, where am I going to find the talent? If they are not local, how do I deal with that? So, being able to seamlessly manage that in remote locations is also important.”
Floyd Christofferson also noted that “You may have a production facility that has multiple sites around the world, so how you bridge these really becomes a problem and has also become the new norm in the industry.”
When asked if remote is the new norm, Mattia Varriale, Sales Director, Backlight, explains, “I would say hybrid is the new norm and being dynamic is the new norm. Having tools like iconik and Storj that allow you to be dynamic is important in this new norm.”
Normal workflow has to now incorporate remote workflow.
Dominic Harland, CEO, GB Labs, shared some interesting insights when asked about remote media production workflows.
“It is the norm. Virtually every production company is looking at doing it,” explains Dominic Harland. “But it’s usually only for part of what they are doing. It’s quite a tricky one because they all want it but not everybody is dispersed everywhere, so that is more of a challenge. It’s not like they are going full on with it and the workflow specifically, it’s now that their normal workflow has to incorporate those things.”
Watch the full interview video featuring M&E technology thought leaders for more compelling insights.
The distributed cloud is the transformative technology.
The survey data supports the concept that remote work is the new norm as 79.4% said that migrating to cloud-based workflows is important.
But not all clouds were created equal. It is incredibly expensive to utilize hyperscalers for multi-region cloud storage and many of the budget players have poor performance outside of the US and EU.
Unlike traditional storage solutions, the distributed cloud is a much better solution for media workflows. Using a global network of tens of thousands of nodes, distributed cloud storage allows remote production teams to upload from any location, enabling editors around the globe fast access to the files.
Additionally, Storj offers Object Mount, the NAB 2025 Product of the Year for cloud storage and compute. Object Mount enables post-production resources to view and edit files in any object storage with the ease and speed of local desktop access.
Get more insights in the report “5 Ways the distributed cloud solves hybrid media workflow issues” (no wall, 2:26). Or visit storj.io to learn how Storj is drastically improving media workflows and budgets.
To learn more about globally distributed cloud storage for M&E, visit https://www.storj.io/use-cases/media
