Mary Meeker’s 2014 Trends: What it means for media and entertainment
By Jonathan Wall
Every year around this time, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins pulls together a mind-blowing array of data and insight about the state of the internet. You can see her latest research here, which was presented just days ago.
Two things stood out this year, particularly for those in the media and entertainment business.
Trend 1: Cloud storage is growing exponentially
While this data is close to a year old, the pace of adoption of cloud storage is just plain torrid. Extrapolating a bit, that would mean that now there are approximately 3 trillion objects being stored in Amazon S3 alone, not to mention everything in the other cloud storage platforms.
Why? The days of having to rely on costly, slow to deploy, hard to manage on-premise storage are on the demise. The cloud has become too cost effective and efficient for organizations to stick with the old way. Now that doesn’t mean that everyone is “all cloud, all the time” just yet, but if you aren’t currently exploring how to use the cloud to store data and professional media files, you almost certainly risk falling behind your competitors.
Plus, cloud storage is the gateway for a myriad of other cloud services, not just backup and archiving, including anything from media processing and big data analysis to distribution via CDNs and streaming services. More organizations will be looking to the cloud for those services for the same reasons they are adopting cloud storage – it’s faster and cheaper to let someone else setup and manage the systems then to build and maintain them on your own.
Trend 2: The multi-screen world isn’t slowing down any time soon
Just 7 years ago, there was still one primary screen in the house. However, now with the growing adoption of multiple devices, the array of screen sizes and platforms that media companies need to support for video is only getting more and more complex.
To support this changing dynamic in the market, companies like Netflix are taking advantage of cloud based media processing solutions. Not only is it more cost effective and faster than doing it on-site, it also gives them more flexibility. Although Netflix may seem like an exception now, it’s only a matter of time before this becomes the norm for other media companies. Simultaneously, there will be a rise in demand for solutions that will enable these organizations to quickly, and easily take advantage of the cloud. We have already started to see evidence of this shift.
How does your organization compare? What’s your cloud storage strategy? And which cloud services will you add to your workflows to ensure you at least match if not pull ahead of your competition?
