Broadcast Pros Shows Growing Use of Hybrid-Cloud Storage and AI/ML Tools to Manage Media – Cloudian

Cloudian, Inc. announced that a survey of broadcast professionals revealed that 78% plan to employ hybrid cloud technologies – a combination of cloud-based and on-premises storage – to more quickly manage media archives.

To help index, find and retrieve media, 80% plan to employ AI and machine learning (ML) technologies to enrich metadata.

The survey also found that 51% of tape users plan to move away from tape media. 

The survey, conducted by Cloudian during this year’s NAB show, held April 7-12 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, was based on more than 300 in-person interviews.

Results from the survey include:

Interest in AI and machine-learning tools with metadata capabilities for media retrieval is growing
Post-production professionals are frustrated with today’s media management solutions, with 73% of respondents reporting that finding and/or retrieving media is a primary storage challenge. 55% said that media management is more time-consuming than it was three years ago, indicating a need for improved search processes. As a result, 80% of respondents are considering tools that employ AI and/or ML technology to help tag or label media, pointing to a strong interest in storage solutions that embed rich metadata tags and incorporate metadata-based search tools.  
 
Use of hybrid cloud storage is increasing, driving the need for cloud-compatible on-premises storage solutions
78% of respondents said they expect to use hybrid cloud storage in the next three years, up from just 16% who use it today, indicating a growing need for storage solutions with easy-to-use cloud integration. On the other hand, respondents foresee a decline in the exclusive use of public cloud storage. 70% report storing media entirely in the cloud today; just 9% said they will be cloud-only three years from now. 

Tape is being displaced, driving the need for scalable disk storage solutions
Disk-based solutions are the dominant archival storage media; 53% of respondents said HDDs are their preferred storage medium, while 32% use tape for their archival storage. However, 51% of tape users said they plan to move away from tape within the next three years.

“These results point to a dramatic transition now underway, as broadcast professionals seek solutions that make it faster and easier to monetize their media,” said Jon Toor, CMO, Cloudian. “The days of write-once, read-never storage are over. Today, post-production teams access their archives more frequently, leverage media assets across multiple platforms and implement hybrid cloud architectures. All of these factors drive the need for platforms such as Cloudian’s easy-to-search, cloud-integrated media storage.“