While media and entertainment (M&E) organisations are still relatively new to cloud storage, public cloud storage use is on the rise, with 89% of respondents looking to increase (74%) or maintain (15%) their cloud services.
Wasabi commissioned the independent market research agency Vanson Bourne to conduct research into cloud storage, which was done in November and December 2022.
The study surveyed 1,000 IT decision-makers who had at least some involvement in or responsibility for public cloud storage purchases in their organisation.
M&E respondents said they allocate 13.9% of their IT budgets to public cloud storage services, on average.
However, overdrawn budgets due to hidden fees, alongside cybersecurity and data loss concerns, remain problematic for M&E organisations.
“The media and entertainment industry is a key vertical for cloud storage services, driven by the need for accessibility to large media files among multiple organizations and geographically distributed teams,” said Andrew Smith, senior manager of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi Technologies.
“While complex fee structures and cybersecurity concerns remain obstacles for many M&E organisations, planned increases in cloud storage budgeting over the next year, combined with a very high prevalence of storage migration from on premises to cloud, clearly shows the M&E industry is embracing and growing their cloud storage use year on year,” said Smith.
The study found that complex fees are a major challenge for M&E organisations globally.
Nearly half (49%) of M&E organisations’ public cloud storage bill was comprised of fees in 2022, with the other half going to actual storage capacity used.
M&E respondents showed a very high prevalence of data migration to cloud, with 95% saying they migrated storage from on-premises to public cloud in the last year.
Also, M&E organisations are concerned about cybersecurity and data loss.
Almost half (45%) of M&E organisations reported using more than one public cloud provider. Data security requirements were one of the top reasons why M&E organisations were choosing a multi-cloud strategy, ranking a close second (44%) to different buying centres within the organisation making their own purchase decisions (47%).
The top three biggest security concerns M&E organisations have with public cloud include lack of native security services (42%); lack of native backup, disaster and data protection tools and services (39%); and lack of experience with cloud platform or adequate security training (38%).
