A Cloud-Focused Approach for Hollywood to Overcome Data Storage Woes

Like most industries, the media and entertainment sector has been turned upside-down amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, David Friend, CEO and co-founder of Wasabi, discusses the avenues Hollywood should explore, including moving to the cloud, in order to keep up with the recent digital evolution.

Hollywood has historically been a risk-averse industry, especially when adopting new technologies. While the industry has always been at the cutting edge of virtual production technologies like CGI software, the adoption of other applications critical for conducting business such as cloud storage has been slow and complicated. 

Like many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a force of reckoning for Hollywood. Traditional movie sets with hundreds of people shut down almost overnight, production teams distributed due to work from home orders, and movie theater doors shuttered. As a result, the industry looked for ways to meet release deadlines and reach consumers while balancing new working environments. 

So, what should Hollywood executives be focusing on during this tumultuous period of movie and TV production? The answer lies in data. 

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Hollywood’s Data Predicament

Since the dawn of digital film editing, production teams have relied on traditional forms of file storage-and-transfer through disc and on-premise servers. This process usually requires a tremendous amount of time and money, as it is generally expensive to maintain such storage infrastructure. These file storage and transfer mechanisms also pose significant security and data loss risks from malicious hackers or natural disasters.  

As technology evolves, the tools production companies are using to create content have also changed, impacting the size of the files they are looking to store and share. Technological advancements such as HD video, larger-scale production, and special-effects software like CGI, have made TV and movie production data-intensive processes that have pushed the limits of disc and on-premise storage methods, costing companies hundreds of thousands in annual IT investment. This has created an unsustainable situation where data storage costs may look like the next summer blockbuster budget, forcing Hollywood to seek alternative options, including cloud migrations.

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Adapting the Production Process to a Bottomless Mindset

For far too long, technology executives in Hollywood have turned to what they’re most comfortable with when considering their IT infrastructure – be it expanding on-premises storage or turning to familiar names like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. While these are seemingly easy solutions, choosing any of them brings many executives right back to staring down nauseating storage invoices, deciding which archived data to delete to manage capacity limits, or finding themselves stuck in contracts where they are overpaying and are failing to migrate to a new provider. 

Fortunately, there’s a new way of thinking driving a new age of storage options to tackle this problem – what I call bottomless cloud storage. The bottomless mindset reimagines the traditional approach to cloud storage that has relied on rigid capacity and enables users to manage how much data they want to store at any given time. Instead of facing hidden charges for egress, teams can access critical files anywhere and at any time. With a bottomless approach to data storage, companies can truly unlock the value of data without worrying about skyrocketing fees or reduced performance. 

For Hollywood, a bottomless mindset means higher-quality files are available at a moment’s notice, and there is no need to ship hard drives or access on-premise servers. This enables faster production times by allowing real-time editing and collaboration across teams. It also grants easier access to archived files from scenes left on cutting room floors to productions created years earlier. Lastly, and potentially most importantly, it means faster, cheaper, and easier to use storage, enabling greater adaptability and resilience for today’s remote workforce. 

The accelerated production times made possible through a bottomless cloud aren’t the only benefits, though – it also introduces new distribution options to reach customers faster and at home.

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Identifying New Distribution Channels

Streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have enjoyed a swift rise in popularity. Cut to March of 2020, and this popularity skyrocketed as these services became among a few forms of entertainment during the pandemic-induced lockdown. But while streaming platforms are a win for consumers, they pose a challenge to production companies when it comes to delivery. Leveraging the cloud can help Hollywood deliver productions at rapid speeds and keep up with consumers’ demand, but it doesn’t come without its challenges within the industry. 

As production companies began shifting to the cloud, many companies opted for mainstream public cloud storage providers but quickly ran into challenges such as unpredictable egress charges and hidden fees. Others like Warner Media were forced into agreementsOpens a new window with industry giants like Amazon, who required an extension of Warner Media’s AWS contract to include HBO Max to Amazon’s streaming services. 

If I’m a Hollywood executive, do I want to be signing a check to Amazon for cloud storage when I’m also competing with them? Legendary Entertainment is an example of a production company that has moved to a predictable and agile cloud solution to streamline the company’s content storage, cut storage costs and solve the data management challenges associated with production and development.

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A Cloud-Focused Hollywood

While Hollywood’s cloud migration is still underway and there are plenty of hurdles to overcome, it’s clear that the possibilities that lie ahead will revolutionize the industry. Similar to how we’ve seen other industries adapt over the last 11 months, the way Hollywood conducts business has changed forever – from the speed at which films and TV shows are produced to the expansive access to old content to the way we consume entertainment. I am looking forward to accessing a newly released movie followed by a rerun of my favorite television show from the comfort of my home and enabled by the cloud.

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