Scale Logic led the way with its NAB Knowledge Zone – two days of expert customer and partner testimonials that revealed new insights and strategies for media management and storage.

Each presentation captured different aspects of media management strategy, including variations on a theme we saw frequently at the show: the evolving needs of media producers and broadcasters for smart, scalable storage solutions at every stage of the workflow.

Key Takeaways

It’s not too late if you’re behind the curve.

While production professionals in media and entertainment have long known the value of smart storage and networking strategies, other enterprises are just now realizing that they too have critical business needs involving digital media.

For Fortune100 companies and universities, mega-churches and creative start-ups, the future of marketing is media-driven. Many of these organizations recognize that they need better organization and long-term storage strategies, but they often lack institutional knowledge of production environments and may not be prioritizing media as much as they should.

Being slow to the party is no reason to stick with the status quo. Leaders who build a case for investments in storage and media workflow at any stage and at any level of sophistication can prepare an organization for the future of efficient media management.

Ditch your grandpa’s folder-based asset hierarchy

Project- or folder-based organizational systems can hamper backup and archiving operations due to a lack of visibility across the enterprise to the data contained in the folders. This results in a great deal of (expensive) human intervention to find precisely the right images, clips and graphics.

A folder-based hierarchy creates confusion among editors, GFX professionals and others working collaboratively on projects, while also making it difficult for new staff to see and access digital assets intuitively. A better strategy is to employ digital asset management (DAM) tools and trends instead of categorizing all assets by project.

Hybrid cloud solutions can improve media workflows

The flexibility of a hybrid cloud model for media can bring strategic advantages to production and broadcast environments. By combining private and public clouds – while maintaining distinct identities – media organizations can manage co-location, managed services and media assets with cloud resources uniquely suited for each.

Likewise, solution vendors are getting used to the new digital environment by replacing legacy storage platforms with flexible, scalable and secure hybrid cloud solutions. This is helping many companies shift priorities to focus on media asset creation and updating inefficient hardware.

By operating within this ecosystem, customers can directly link with partner companies instead of connecting them in multiple, far-flung locations. The result is a faster and more efficient production environment; a good thing in an industry where time is money.

Storage and data management tools must be intuitive

Bringing an organization toward a new, more sophisticated storage solution is not without its risks, namely a lack of adoption among the people working with the data. For producers, editors and other media professionals who aren’t IT experts, the front end of any storage solution must be instantly understandable and intuitive enough to ensure a shallow learning curve.

New tools from software providers are helping to demystify storage and making it easy for non-technical end-users to understand and engage in an enterprise-wide storage strategy. Simplified user interfaces can help editors access assets quickly, while a converged data fabric platform can automate the storage, processing, analysis and management of unstructured data and media assets.

As technology providers continue to make this process simpler for end users, we will begin to see more widespread adoption of robust storage solutions.

Thanks to all of our partners –  StorageDNA, Walmart Event Solutions, ROOT6, Lesspain Software, Cantemo, Backblaze, Jim Casabella, North Shore Automation and CineSys-Oceana – for sharing their smarts, strategies and successes with media and entertainment storage. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing more insights from our NAB Knowledge Zone presenters, along with exclusive content only shared at the show.

See you all in Vegas next year!