Noemi Greyzdorf, Product Marketing Director, Quantum

As 2020 comes to a close and the media industry begins to look to the future, it’s clear that long-term archiving and remote production will be two of the most important trends in 2021. 

Managing, storing and protecting the huge volumes of valuable digital content created every day will be a big priority for media companies. The most cost-effective solutions for archiving content today use high-capacity tape robotic libraries in local, cloud and remote locations. But solving archiving challenges of the future will require forward thinking combined with advanced, easily scalable, air-gapped tape architectures that support erasure coding, geo-spreading with exascale capacities, the highest reliability, and the most robust cybersecurity protection. The ability to intelligently move and classify content using active archive software with metadata capabilities will also be critical. 

With most film and TV productions on hold during the pandemic, the content stored in these archives will continue to take a starring role in 2021, making the ability to easily access, update and reuse it another key priority. Instead of moving huge amounts of video data around, media companies have started moving their applications to where the content is stored, and technologies that offer remote production and editing capabilities will continue to be vital in 2021. 

As most facilities will remain closed at least at the beginning of the year, production staff will continue to need remote desktop technology to enable them to access their workstations and applications, and maintain their creative workflows from home. These virtual workspaces are essential for remote teams that need continuous access to shared assets for projects, especially if moving everything to the cloud isn’t a viable option.

Storage infrastructure will be a key component in workflows to help creatives store, access and share their projects. Using remote desktop technologies in tandem with their existing storage ecosystem will enable companies to streamline remote video workflows without interrupting the storage infrastructure. Content can then be securely stored for the long term and accessed as needed.

While 2021 will continue to present some of the same production challenges that hit the industry in 2020, with long-term digital archiving and remote production technology, media businesses and production staff will have the best chance of coming out on top.