Cloud remains central, but costs prompt reconsideration of strategy

As operational expenditures grow, some broadcast and production companies are reevaluating the extent of their cloud commitments.

Rather than abandoning cloud technology altogether, many are shifting to hybrid or on-premise strategies to regain financial control while retaining essential cloud capabilities.

“Things decentralize, then re-centralize,” said Sean Lee, CEO of OpenDrives. “As soon as you reach a limit on one side, it just swings back to the other. It’s the nature of things.”

“We saw large enterprise customers begin to repatriate out of the cloud,” added Lee. “It’s really expensive to maintain these OpEx budgets where it’s just inflation, inflation, inflation.”

AWS’s Nina Walsh on convergence of mediums creating new opportunities

Industry executives across storage, workflow management and distribution report a noticeable shift in thinking: Cloud remains valuable for certain workflows, but companies are becoming more selective about which operations truly benefit from cloud deployment.

Hybrid approaches gain ground

The earliest cloud adopters are leading the repatriation movement, having accumulated enough experience to identify which workloads are cost-effective in the cloud versus on premise.

“We are seeing a retreat quite in a big way. But it hasn’t necessarily felt like they’re stuck. It’s really a case of what is actually the alternative,” said Barry Evans, SVP of product development at PixitMedia.

This retreat isn’t complete abandonment of cloud resources, but rather a more nuanced approach. Companies increasingly evaluate workflows case by case, using cloud environments for bursting capacity, collaborative projects and global accessibility, while keeping predictable, high-volume workloads on-premise.

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“Certain projects make a lot of sense in the cloud and certain projects make more financial sense to do on-prem. People are finding is that if I’m acquiring or processing content that already exists in the cloud, why would I bother bringing it down,” said Mark Wronski, EVP of product at Telestream.

Balancing cost and performance in media storage strategies

Balancing cloud with economic realities

Several factors are pushing organizations toward hybrid models:

• Rising cloud costs: As initial cloud credits expire and inflation affects service pricing, organizations face growing operational expenses.
• Storage expansion: Increasing adoption of 4K, 8K and high-bitrate formats multiplies storage requirements.
• Egress fees: Moving large media files in and out of cloud environments can trigger substantial data transfer charges.
• Business consolidation: Corporate mergers create pressure to reduce operational costs.

“There are some workloads that are better in the cloud. The problem is everybody moved to the cloud. And then they quickly realized the productivity, the value add of the moving is offset by the cost of the evenness. And they’re coming back,” said Abhi Dey, general manager and chief operating officer at PixitMedia. 

Daniel Marshall, EVP of global sales at Amagi, pointed to data movement costs as a key factor: “Cloud only works if you’re not having this time to pay the back and forth because the egress and ingress costs are killing.”

Containerization offers flexibility

Technology leaders are implementing containerization to ease movement between environments. This approach allows applications to run consistently across different infrastructures.

“We introduced containerization into our Atlas platform four or five years ago,” Lee said. “Everyone I talk to is like, ‘Oh, yeah, we either are completely containerized or have a project to containerize.’ Everybody is moving in that direction.”

OpenDrives recently announced Astraeus, a platform designed to deploy cloud-native environments on-premise.

“What Astraeus is, is a framework platform that allows you to deploy (containerized workflows) on-prem in an easy-to-use way,” Lee explained.

The advantage lies in resource utilization. “As your workload changes through the day, service load will change through the day, flexibly,” said Michael Wilsker of OpenDrives.

Cloud providers respond

Cloud providers recognize the cost concerns and are adjusting strategies. Nina Walsh of AWS acknowledged that cost efficiency ranks among customers’ top three priorities.

AWS’s Nina Walsh on convergence of mediums creating new opportunities

“It really is unique for every company,” Walsh said. “I think it depends what their operations look like. Are they in one location, are they in 20? Where is the majority of their production happening?”

Walsh highlighted media-specific cloud services that help companies extract more value without excess costs. She also pointed to customer interest in automation, AI-assisted workflows and better audience targeting as ways to offset costs through new revenue opportunities.

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Marshall from Amagi predicted competitive pressure will eventually drive down cloud costs.

“In the next year, year and a half, you’re going to see some of those ingress and egress charges really come down…because some new cloud providers are going to force that,” said Marshall.

Archive storage dilemma

Deep archiving presents a particular challenge in hybrid environments. The economics of cloud archive storage can trap assets behind expensive retrieval barriers.

“Deep archive is a problem,” said Dey. “The egress price there…it’s very expensive. If you are asking out-of-band data, if you want the rest of it to happen now, then you’re paying premium prices for it.”

Evans added, “When it comes to deep archive-type situations, you’re stuck. There’s no two ways around that.”

For companies with extensive content libraries, this creates a critical decision point about where to place long-term assets.

Balancing costs and capabilities

Media companies now face more complex infrastructure decisions than the earlier “all-in” cloud strategies promised. The industry appears to be entering a more mature phase where cloud adoption involves targeted use cases rather than wholesale migration.

“We don’t talk to any customers that are swimming in excess management,” Wronski said. “Everything seems to be lean and mean, and that’s just where we are today.”

As broadcasters navigate these economic pressures, the focus shifts to optimizing existing investments while maintaining flexibility for future innovation. The pendulum swing between centralized and distributed technologies continues, with companies working to find the optimal balance for their specific operational needs.

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