Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1334761
BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 6 POST JAN/FEB 2021 ur industry is unique in that our continual pursuit of higher quality, more efficiencies, greater speed and increased value drive consistent, rapid innovation. This has never been clearer than it is today, with the adoption of new technologies and services in response to the unprecedented challenges our industry faced this past year. Although 2021 is sure to bring its own batch of challenges, I'm confident that our indus- try's spirit of innovation will continue to fuel our passion for storytelling and accelerate our exploration of new ways to bring compelling stories to life. As we kickstart a new year, there are several key considerations that should be taken into account as we continue our never-ending pursuit of innovation COLLABORATION IS KING Even if it's not always clearly defined, the industry's top priority has always been collaboration. This means different things in our respective businesses, but is key to almost all the media creation, distribution and consumption strategies that have, and will, succeed. It's about achieving quality, quantity and value by empow- ering the people at the center of your workflows with the technology they need to succeed. From a storage point of view, this means finding a technology partner that can help breakdown silos, eliminate bottlenecks, provide the performance re- quired to fuel even the most demanding emerging workflows, and keep content secure even as access expands to home offices. In the end, strategies focused on improving and accelerating collaboration will lead to value realization. THE SEARCH FOR VALUE Value can mean a multitude of different things. In some cases, this implies granu- larity — i.e., the ability to match resources directly to the business need. In others, it's about consumption models or flexibil- ity to deal with short, yet very high am- plitude waves of infrastructure demand. When it comes to storage decisions, finding this value might range from the ability to grow incrementally, to eliminat- ing overhead management, to ensuring stable integrations with existing tools, to expansion to cloud for bursty appli- cations. In my mind, market forces like increasingly-tighter margins and faster time to deliver only increase the frugality that further drives the innovation that ultimately leads to improved efficiency, more rapid iterations and reduced costs. WHY CLOUD ADOPTION? Cloud is emerging as a critical piece of many creative workflows, but we still need to answer the 'why' before com- mitting to a cloud strategy. Cloud has immense value, but it isn't the answer to everything, particularly in media work- flows. For example, the cost of cloud is more expensive for sustained activity in almost every use case, but it's an excel- lent solution for peaks. Unfortunately, I have seen many businesses fail to ask and answer the 'why' when developing their cloud strategy, resulting in over- whelming complexity, slower pipelines and bill shock. Hardware integration with the cloud is important, but as you com- pare storage vendors, seek out a partner who can draw from experience to help identify and answer the 'why' today so you can deploy solutions that support your spirit of innovation and fuel your passion for great storytelling. While 2020 was a challenge, a new year has arrived. Taking these storage consider- ations to heart will help drive meaningful innovation for years to come. STORAGE CONSIDERATIONS FOR M&E IT LEADERS IN 2021 BY ALEX TIMBS GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT DELL TECHNOLOGIES DELL.TO/MEDIA O