Post Magazine

January/February 2020

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WORKFLOW www.postmagazine.com 38 POST JAN/FEB 2020 rom technological development to growing competitive pressures and the increasing need for speed, post production facilities are facing a per- fect storm of trends that's driving them towards operational change. For example, the post industry is quickly moving away from traditional workflows where assets were physically delivered to the various stakeholders involved. New media formats are now completely digital, with all the processing and distribution taking place through software and services. Linked to this is the growing pressure post houses are under to be more agile and use resources efficiently. Not having to process and manage physical assets increases agility by freeing up assets. Arguably even more prominent is the importance of speed in a crowded industry. Post houses need to increase their efficiency and deliver content more quickly than ever, particularly given that media assets are now produced and distributed globally. With all this in mind, the adoption of hybrid cloud workflows that use a combination of public cloud, private cloud and on-premises storage and compute re- sources is becoming increasingly popular. However, it's not all plain sailing, as these new production and distribution work- flows come with challenges of their own. HYBRID CLOUD COMES WITH COMPLICATIONS Although modern hybrid cloud environ- ments can deliver many operational and financial benefits — including helping to reduce IT costs, streamline administration and speed up media production — col- laborating on assets and moving content across the infrastructure have both become much more challenging. Accessing and sharing content is now more complicated than ever, as files that need to be exchanged are often stored in multiple clouds and on-premises systems. Not only that, different teams that need access to assets are likely to be geograph- ically dispersed, while traditional transfer technologies bridging these different environments are slow and unreliable. Then there's the issue of security. It's vital that post facilities are able to prevent leaks and ensure that assets are only made available to the right people — which is made more complicated when assets are spread across multiple and different systems and storage platforms. In high-value asset scenarios it be- comes especially important to understand who has access to which assets, meaning organizations need to be able to see the identities of those involved throughout the entire production process. And this applies both internally and externally. As content is frequently moved between organizations, security solutions have to support these sophisticated and complex requirements, which is made all the more difficult given that content now lives in multiple cloud platforms. The truth is that many of the tools be- ing used today simply aren't able to cope with the complexity involved in hybrid cloud workflows — which is hindering collaboration at a time when that isn't an option for post facilities and other media organizations. So, what's the solution? How can post houses facilitate internal and external collaboration in a hybrid cloud world? OVERCOMING THE COLLABORATION CONUNDRUM With post facilities needing to create more high-value assets in increasing- ly shorter turnaround times, enabling secure intercompany and intracompany collaboration is more critical than ever. Facilities need to be able to quickly, easily and securely exchange and deliver assets of any size, over any distance, and between end users across different organizations, combining multiple cloud platforms as well as on-premises storage. As such, they need access to modern cloud-based services that can eliminate the complexities of asset sharing and collaboration in hybrid environments. For example, having one user interface for accessing files stored in the cloud or on-premises would enable users to easily transfer assets between environments, all protected by access controls that provide access in a secure and sensible manner. The key is realtime visibility and con- trol over the whole storage. With this in place, activities can be monitored, and users can be confident that assets can be securely shared and exchanged with collaborators located anywhere around the world. As hybrid workflows continue to take hold, post houses need to move beyond just sharing files. They need to think about developing a cloud content movement strategy that covers not just the delivery of an asset that has been produced, but also the delivery and pro- cessing of assets as they come to life. Solutions that overcome the file transfer challenges of hybrid cloud by enabling the fast, secure and reliable movement of assets across different cloud and storage environments will have vital roles to play in the future of the industry. Only with those in place, will post houses be able to transfer assets around the world in a way that truly facilitates collaboration. FACILITATING COLLABORATION IN A HYBRID CLOUD WORLD BY JAY MIGLIACCIO SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER IBM ASPERA WWW.IBM.COM/ PRODUCTS/ASPERA F NAVIGATING THROUGH A PERFECT STORM OF TRENDS Studios need a content movement strategy. Post is moving from traditional workflows. Hybrid cloud can become complicated.

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