The IABM Technology and Trends Roadmap isn’t just for industry technologists to use as a reference. IABM has discovered industry execs using it as a starting point for their keynote speeches: product line managers are using it to plot their own products; and corporate board members get a better understanding of where the company’s products sit on the adoption curve, hence a better grasp or risks vs gross margins. This also assists marketing activities by giving an indication of how best to promote products within M&E and adjacent/vertical market areas.
GB Labs – From Shoot to Seamless Recovery: Rethinking Disaster Recovery and High Availability for Modern Media Workflows
In the world of media production, “high availability” means different things depending on who you ask. For post teams capturing hundreds of hours of footage at massive shoot ratios, or creative teams under tight delivery deadlines, storage downtime doesn’t just cause frustration—it halts progress.
The need for modern disaster recovery (DR) and high availability solutions has never been more urgent. Yet many teams are still relying on outdated infrastructure—systems built for static backup, not dynamic collaboration.
Tuxera – The evolution of creative infrastructure
The media and entertainment industry is experiencing unprecedented growth in data demands. With an estimated 250-300% increase in media data over the last five years, and increasing adoption of 4k workflows, traditional approaches to storage and file sharing are struggling to keep pace with modern creative workflows. From post-production houses exchanging terabytes of data with global partners, to broadcasters managing time-critical content for live events, the ability to move and access massive files swiftly and securely has become critical to business success.
As someone who has spent years developing network file sharing protocols, I’ve witnessed firsthand how technical infrastructure can either empower or hinder creative teams. The reality is stark: every minute spent waiting for files to transfer or load is post-production paused and money lost.
Imagine Communications – The balancing act
For today’s broadcasters, the choice between deploying services on-prem or in the cloud has become a critical decision. On the surface, it’s a simple one — on-prem systems require significant investments in physical infrastructure and time, while cloud solutions offer rapid deployment without the maintenance headaches.
However, if you dig a little deeper, the choice isn’t so clear-cut. To balance costs and their environmental footprint, broadcasters must determine when using cloud over on-prem solutions makes the most sense.
GB Labs – Changing the landscape of modern shared media storage
GB Labs is a well-known provider of industry leading storage, focusing on media-based production storage, from traditional on-premise to innovative solutions, that are ideal for remote and hybrid working needs. The company was established over two decades ago on the premise that regular shared storage has multiple restrictions and complications that can make it expensive and problematic to use.
Three Media – Driving towards business agility
I think it is safe to start from the assumption that every media business is moving from a smokestack approach – a production line of bespoke, application specific devices – to a software-defined, cloud smart architecture. This will include large elements of intelligent automation, eliminating the mundane to let people concentrate on where they generate real business value.
Signiant – Bridging the gaps between files and objects for media
File and object storage are both common technologies used for persistently storing digital media. While files and objects have many similarities, there are some notable differences.
A key difference is that while the contents of a file can be changed at any time, the content of an object can only be set when it’s originally created. An object can be replaced with an entirely new object with the same name (or “key”), but parts of an object cannot be changed independently. Simplifications like this facilitate improved scaling, reliability and data durability when all that’s needed is a mechanism to reliably store and retrieve fixed blobs of data.
Blue Lucy – Bringing the cloud to earth
I was quite pleased to be asked recently by a Canadian colleague what our “theme” would be for the upcoming IBC show. For me, theme reflects the ethos of the Blue Lucy approach to trade shows; we don’t tend talk about product features or the specific capabilities in our roadmap.
The Media Transformation Paradox – Object Matrix
Technological transformation offers a host of benefits: it streamlines workflows, reduces inefficiency, and makes life easier for media professionals. So why is such beneficial change frequently met with resistance?
ASC MHL: How standardizing the media transfer process helps prevent data loss
Recently, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) released its Media Hash List (MHL) specification to bring standardization to the media transfer process. The raw amount of data produced in the media and entertainment industry has never been greater than it is today, and will continue to grow well into the future. Similarly, there are now more data transfer points than ever before.