Should we migrate all our workloads to public cloud storage? Are we past the ‘cloud hype cycle’? Would we be better off staying completely on-premises? These are some of the questions that have been lingering in the minds of decision-makers in media businesses for a while now. At Perifery, we believe that hybrid cloud storage is the answer to many of these concerns. To learn why, continue reading this blog.
In recent years, a lot of good has come from a hybrid approach—hybrid cars, hybrid working, hybrid dogs, etc. Hybrid storage belongs in this list as well. But to understand what exactly hybrid cloud brings to the table, one needs to understand how cloud storage and on-premises storage are complementary in nature.
Cloud storage: Low CapEx option best suited for global collaboration
Public cloud provides a more agile and elastic storage solution for media businesses. During the pandemic, organizations worldwide experienced the benefits of cloud adoption firsthand. It allowed businesses to scale up or down rapidly without significant capital expenditures (CapEx) while ensuring business continuity through seamless global connectivity and collaboration. This shift was much to the delight of those who had long predicted a widespread “cloud migration.”
However, it didn’t take long for businesses to recognize the drawbacks of cloud storage. High recurring operational costs—especially egress and retrieval fees—can lead to unpredictable expenses. Additionally, cloud storage often struggles to deliver low-latency access to large, high-resolution files, as the cloud’s performance depends heavily on internet connectivity. Security and compliance risks are another concern, with increasing regulatory mandates requiring stringent data protection measures that can be complex, costly, and challenging to implement in the cloud.
On-premises storage: Secure option for low latency needs
Over the years, on-prem storage has been the preferred choice of storage for media businesses. On-prem storage continues to be a reliable storage medium that empowers businesses with strong control over their data. However, it is challenging for an organization to remain fully on-premises for several reasons.
Firstly, on-prem storage requires significant upfront investment in hardware, software, and IT resources. Scaling up involves high costs and efforts, while scaling down as per seasonality and demand cycles is not practically possible. Business continuity and disaster recovery risks are also high with on-prem storage as it is vulnerable to physical damage. With distributed teams being the modern-day norm, relying solely on on-prem storage can hinder global collaboration and workflow efficiency.
Hybrid cloud: Striking the right balance among security, control, and expenses
A hybrid approach to storage helps businesses overcome the limitations of cloud and on-premises and helps businesses strike the right balance among security, control, and expenses. With a well-planned and maintained hybrid cloud setup, business operations can become more efficient and profitable in the long run. Here are some common scenarios where media organizations can benefit by leveraging a hybrid setup.
- High resolution editing and post-production: High resolution media like 4K, 8K, RAW files require low-latency access for video editing, VFX, etc. On-prem storage can help in such situations as it provides fast read/write speeds. But cloud is the better place for intermediate files and finished projects to reside. From cloud, they can be easily shared with distributed teams or archived.
- Redundancy for data loss protection and disaster recovery: On-prem is essential to ensure easy data availability for ongoing projects. Cloud can act as an offsite backup to ensure protection against hardware failures, cyberattacks, or natural disasters. But even with cloud, the onus for ensuring redundancy and data loss protection remains on your IT teams.
- Live broadcast and streaming: Live streams, real-time production requires ultra-low latency transmission, which can be enabled by on-prem storage. But cloud is often a better option for distribution, transcoding, and content delivery via content delivery networks (CDNs) for global audiences.
- Regulatory compliance needs: Regulations and data protection laws often demand sensitive information reside on-prem, at least for a certain predefined period. As and when assets become old enough to not be considered for regulatory compliance purposes, they could be moved to cloud, where they can reside for a long term.
To sum it up, understanding where to store assets for efficiency and performance is key to a successful hybrid strategy. Your media teams will gain this understanding as your organization matures through the hybrid cloud journey. And once your teams excel at balancing on-premises and cloud workloads, there’s no going back from hybrid— which is why hybrid cloud storage is here to stay.
Learn more
Want to make smarter storage decisions? Watch this webinar featuring our experts to gain valuable insights into choosing the right cloud, on-prem, or hybrid storage solution for your business.
