Tackling storage and budget pressures in media & entertainment workflows

From streaming blockbusters to immersive VR experiences, media production today is defined by unprecedented data demands. As projects scale in ambition and complexity, storage emerges as both a cornerstone and a cost pressure point across the industry.  Keeping pace with the data deluge introduces persistent challenges around cost, accessibility, and long-term usability. In production workflows, storage management becomes both a financial and logistical battleground.

The M&E mega-trends shaping cost and data storage landscapes

1. Explosive Data Growth in the Zettabyte Era

Global data production continues to surge. At the time of writing, we now have around 175 zettabytes of data circulating globally. For the M&E sector, this translates into storing, managing, and retrieving ever-larger media files while balancing speed, resiliency, and cost.

2. Ultra-High resolution, Immersive formats, & streaming expansion

The shift to 4K, 8K, VR/AR, and other high-definition formats is driving exponential storage growth. Meanwhile, streaming platforms continue to proliferate, each maintaining vast on-demand libraries, adding both scale and complexity to media storage infrastructures.

3. Hybrid storage architectures & automation

The prevailing trend is toward flexible, hybrid storage models, blending on-premises, cloud, and cold tiers to optimise costs, accessibility, and performance. Orchestration systems now manage access, latency, and expenses in real-time, especially crucial for live production media workflows.

4. “Doing Less with Less”: Streamlined workflows & intelligent automation

As spotlighted at this year's NAB Show, the industry’s new mantra is simplicity: eliminate unnecessary steps, standardise workflows, and embrace AI-driven automation, so it is not just to do more, but to do less more efficiently.

5. Consolidation, monetisation, & AI-driven efficiencies

Broadcasters are consolidating operations for cost leverage, aided by generative AI tools for tagging, compliance, and content monetisation. Meanwhile, streaming platforms are moving into a profitability phase, bundling services and focusing on sports and mature franchises to increase margins.

Storage challenges in production

• The CAPEX vs. OPEX dilemma

Whether investing in on-site high-speed storage SAN/NAS, RAID arrays, or on-prem disk pools that offer the throughput essential for editing and transcoding workflows, these systems come with steep capital overheads: hardware provisioning, power, cooling, maintenance, and scale-up limitations; or optimising for a simpler fully managed storage as a service and paying ongoing cloud fees. High-performance and long-term workflows remain a financial burden, especially for mid-sized studios.

• Hidden cloud costs, egress & recovery fees

Hyperscale platforms can lure studios in with low per-GB storage costs, but unwelcome surprises in the guise of inflationary retrieval and egress fees often surface later when media sets are requested.

• On-prem data longevity & digital preservation

Owning storage media, whether drive, flash, or tape, requires lifecycle planning, format migration, and redundancy strategies to ensure access over many years. This process requires additional skills, management, and cost. Utilising an online cold storage service reduces the effort needed and provides data management and access long into the future.

• Discoverability & metadata gaps

Without effective metadata tagging and access tools, archives become opaque, undermining potential reuse, monetisation, or compliance.

Solutions that add long-term value

• Tiered storage with intelligent lifecycle management

Adopt fast tiers for active projects, reduce the length of time before you tier down to cold storage as content ages, and automate transitions to minimise manual effort and cost.

• Incorporate MAM/DAM tools

These offer web-based archive, backup, and metadata workflows that support on-premise disk, tape, or large long-term cloud repositories, providing automated and user-friendly solutions. Metadata-rich MAM features, such as customisable fields, previews, searchable proxies, cloning, encryption, and off-site storage management, are critical for long-term accessibility and preservation.

• Orchestration in hybrid workflows

Manage both on-site and cloud workflows seamlessly, particularly for live or peak workloads, using orchestration systems that automatically allocate resources, monitor performance, ensure security, and scale efficiently.

• For long-term storage, select providers that avoid recovery/egress fees.

New archival services from the likes of CloudColdStorage.com will save budgets over the short and long term because they are price-optimised for lower-cost storage tiers, preventing surprise restore charges as they utilise technology specifically chosen for its long-term storage credentials over millisecond access. A cloud-based cold storage service should be considered as part of a broader, diversified data storage strategy.

• Automate and simplify workflows

Use AI-assisted automation to prune redundant processes, generate metadata on ingestion, and ensure you store less, but smarter.

Next steps for media organisations

1. Assess your data footprint & storage model

Map current spending across active, nearline, and archival tiers—identify egress costs, duplication, and archival gaps.

2. Plan hybrid tiers with lifecycle automation

Define new policies (e.g., rather than wait 90 days “after 30 days inactive → cold tier”) and implement tools that trigger these transitions automatically.

3. Implement robust MAM/DAM systems

Prioritise MAM solutions for metadata-rich, search-friendly archiving, or integrate AI-enhanced DAM platforms when scale demands.

4. Use orchestration for peak and live workflows

Dynamically match compute/storage needs to production demand using orchestration systems, thereby reducing wasted capacity and spend.

5. Future-proof through metadata and AI

Ensure that stored assets are discoverable, accessible, and monetizable, both today and in the years to come, by embedding metadata generation and searchability at the start.

By understanding mega-trends—like the zettabyte explosion, immersive content, hybrid workflows, and AI-driven automation—media organisations can transform storage from a cost sink into a long-term asset. Starting with tiered storage that includes a cloud-based cold storage without egress fees, metadata-rich archiving, and smart orchestration, you build a resilient infrastructure that supports cost control, efficiency, and future reuse.

Archiving doesn't have to be a horror story.