Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524965
ON-PREM STORAGE SEEING GROWTH Signiant has a unique lens on the storage landscape given our platform connects to tens of thousands of storage end- points across the industry. What we're seeing is most media companies using a wide array of storage types, including both file and object storage, on-prem and in the public cloud, and more and more across multiple cloud providers. Different workflows have different requirements, so maintaining flexibility and agility is key. For example, we see a lot of post pro- duction workflows using high-performance, on-prem file storage, where quick access is key, and many distribution workflows moving to the cloud, where elasticity and scalability are critical. It continues to be a moving target. During the pandemic we saw a huge surge in cloud storage being deployed out of necessity, and now we're seeing many workloads being moved back to on-prem to better manage costs. On our platform — which moves petabytes of high-val- ue media every day — we've seen at 134 percent increase in cloud storage and a 304 percent increase in the use of on-prem storage. On-prem is actually growing faster than cloud. For Signiant it's good news, as our plat- form acts as an abstraction layer, providing the agility to use any storage anywhere. With the introduction of Media Engine, we've extended the value of the Signiant Platform beyond fast file transfers. Now, users can perform federated searches across their storage repositories, whether on-prem, in the cloud or a mix. Once they find the assets they are looking for, they can preview them using our proxy-less play capability and mark in and out points to select and move a piece of a larger file. The addition of Media Engine makes it easy for teams to work across an increasingly complex storage landscape. THE LATEST CLOUD AND ON-PREMISE OPTIONS Storage technologies continue to develop at a rapid pace as media & enter- tainment companies look to embrace technologies that allow them to pre- serve, protect and speed up the monetization of digital assets. Organizations across the entire industry ecosystem view storage as a mission-critical part of their wider technology infrastructure. It's perhaps unsurprising that having reached a value of over $10 billion last year, industry research suggests the global media & entertainment storage market will grow to $28.5 billion by 2032. The need for high-performance and cost-effective storage is particularly important across increasingly complex creative and post production studio workflows. Whether content is created in the studio or at remote locations, production is often split between facility and remote workers, adding to the need for effective storage solutions across nearline content archive, preservation and distribution use cases. So, what are the options? While public cloud can be effective for remote production, frequently accessing content can be highly unpredictable, slow and costly to manage. However, keeping large amounts of assets in primary storage is often impractical, not to mention, it's not as secure as it should be. Object storage: the on-premises cloud Bridging the gap between those technologies is object storage — an ideal post production solution, which can act and function as an on-premises cloud. Offering virtually unlimited capacity, users can store vast amounts of data without worrying about running out of space. Compared to other approaches, object stor- age is also highly cost effective and provides quick content retrieval speed and accessibility. At the same time, the emergence of advanced AI technologies is bringing a range of transformational benefits to post production storage and workflow requirements. For instance, Perifery recently announced Perifery AI+ 2.0, a transformational AI-powered solution suite designed to enable media professionals to revitalize existing content libraries and unlock new monetization opportunities. This represents a major step forward for the post production industry, allowing it to overcome the limitations of legacy technolo- gies, which are hampered by inefficient metadata, manual processes and outdated solutions. AI workflows designed specifically for the media & entertainment post production industry incorporate ad- vanced steps and processes that significantly elevate content creation, editing and distribution. AI+ includes a variety of workflow tools across four key categories. Content ingest: Perifery AI+ Ingest is a unified, automated process that enhances productivity and cuts costs to provide content owners the fastest and easiest way to receive content and ensure the quality of that content matches their requirements. Media organization: AI+ media organization tools enhance any content library by enriching metadata, cre- ating derivative content, generating customizable alerts and more. These tools ensure the best content can be found quickly to ensure the highest value is obtained for any content library. Delivery: AI+ offers single-click simplicity for complex content delivery, enabling seamless delivery to OTT platforms and automatic generation of secure websites for content delivery. These tools simplify distribution and ensure secure, efficient content delivery to various platforms. AI archive and move: AI+ auto- matically archives content based on updated metadata to ensure long- term storage and easy retrieval. AI+ also provides users with the ability to leverage accelerated transfer to ensure the fastest transfer of files. As AI technologies continue to push performance boundaries and accelerate the pace of change, post production environments that embrace the most effective storage technologies will be ideally placed to remain at the forefront of digital innovation. STORAGE www.postmagazine.com 20 POST JULY/AUG 2024 BY JON FINEGOLD CMO SIGNIANT WWW.SIGNIANT.COM BY JASON PERR CTO, M&E SOLUTIONS PERIFERY WWW.PERIFERY.COM