Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1481306
Media and Entertainment workflows are becoming more and more distributed, requiring collaboration spanning a region, a country or the globe. This article takes a look at the changing face of collaborative workflows, the challeng- es of common storage architectures and why the answer to global collaboration might already be sitting in your datacenter. HOW ARE WORKFLOWS CHANGING IN THE MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT SPACE? As we've seen in many industries, media companies and their creative teams are looking to break free from the physical tethers of their centralized studios and embrace collaborative workflows that could span the globe. For ex- ample, an editor in London might want to collaborate with an editor in Los Angeles. Global collaboration can increase creativity, increase flexibility, and save time. WHAT IS DRIVING THIS SHIFT? It ultimately comes down to two things: Cutting the teth- er to a single location, and empowering collaboration without boundaries. Removing the obstacles of geography and time zones can open up oppor- tunities to access new talent, and improve productivity. But, there are some technical challenges that stand in the way of fully breaking free of the tether that exists today. WHAT DOES STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE TYPICALLY LOOK LIKE TODAY? Many of our customers build their workflows around high performance central- ized primary storage, and utilize Scale-Out NAS such-as Dell PowerScale (for- merly Isilon). A good Scale-Out NAS will provide the right mix of performance, scale and flexibility, and can support large creative teams and the full range of creative activities across VFX, animation, editing and rendering. These systems are often complemented with high-capacity object-based archive systems such as Dell ECS. These systems revolutionized collaborative workflows at a time when the inefficient and slow copying of media to a local workstation was the norm. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE LIMITATIONS OF THESE SYSTEMS? At a time when teams were co-located and fairly centralized, file-based Scale-Out NAS systems revolutionized collaborative working and provided the high-performance that creatives demanded. However, today and into the future, global collaboration has brought with it the requirement to access and share media across large geographies. While there is tooling to make it possi- ble, it is not a native capability of file-based platforms. By contrast, object storage is massively scalable, and provides a global namespace. Some object platforms – for example, Dell ECS – are available as high-performance all-flash. However, whilst cloud-native or so-called "modern applications" work natively with object storage, many creative tools depend upon file-based access. With these strengths and limitations in mind, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how we view storage – taking advantage of file and object; and on-premises and cloud - to fully support truly distributed workflows. WHAT DOES THIS NEW PARADIGM LOOK LIKE? This new paradigm can be built around the concept of performance edge, dis- tributed core, and protected backup. It places infinitely scalable object storage at the core, high performance file-based storage at the edge, and a protected backup in a separated location. The distributed core is the single source of truth; high performance file- based storage at the edge is hydrated according to workflow demands; and the separated backup provides defense against cyber attack. With this new approach, the performance edge storage can be provisioned according to the needs of the environment. It might be a high-capacity all-flash Scale-Out NAS at the creative hub of an organization, or at the other extreme it might be a USB C drive at a creative's home studio. HOW IS DELL TECHNOLOGIES ABLE TO HELP ACCOMPLISH THIS SHIFT? Dell Technologies provides the products, services and expertise to plan, build and deploy this model. Dell ECS provides a perfect platform for a persistent, distributed core. Dell PowerScale offers the scalability, performance and sim- plicity required at the edge. Superna RansomWare Defender delivers proac- tive and real time protection and Air-Gapped protected backup. With Dell Technologies APEX, data storage can now be procured much more flexibly – responding to the requirements of the workflow and creative teams. Storage can be deployed on-premises, or at colocation facilities in part- nerships with providers like Equinix. Most importantly, Dell Technologies offers deep industry knowledge developed over years of leadership in the industry. We have helped media companies of every size - from small animation studios to large multi-national broadcasters - plan for the future of their workflows. If you'd like to learn about this and other ways in which we are helping me- dia companies prepare for the future, visit us at dell.to/media. RETHINKING STORAGE PARADIGMS IN M&E WORKFLOWS Simon Haywood, CTO, Media & Entertainment, EMEA, Dell Technologies SPONSORED CONTENT