The countdown to the NAB Show in New York City has started, and the Perifery team can’t wait to see you there! We are so excited, five of us jumped on a webinar to talk about what we are looking forward to the most, what you will see at the Perifery booth, and our NAB Show session.

Our Panel and NAB Show Booth Staff

Our 5-person panel for this webinar included me (Sarah Cook, Product Marketing Director), Leanne Tomlin, Global Marketing Director, and Alana Kessler, Sales Director. For the deep technical perspective, Jason Perr, CTO of M&E Solutions, and Jordan Woods, Sr. Solutions Architect, joined us. At the conference, we will be joined by Seth Cohen, VP Sales, K.C. Santos, Sr. Sales Director, and Nick Kind, Regional Sales Manager.

While most of the team was most looking forward to talking to existing and potential customers, meeting with partners, and visiting with colleagues from different geographical locations, Jason is anticipating the fun of getting to show all the new things his AI engineering team has been working on. And, of course, we all love the atmosphere and the food in NYC...especially the NY-style pizza! Me? I’m just hoping to run into Lin Manuel-Miranda again (as I did earlier this year at a Broadway after-show hotspot).

Who is Perifery?

Perifery was established in 2023 as a division of DataCore, which has been around a quarter of a century. As Leanne explained, “We offer flexible, intelligent, and powerful software-defined storage solutions that operate across the core, edge, and cloud. We build on this legacy by offering cutting-edge nearline and active archive storage solutions, as well as AI-enabled workflow technology tailored to meet the evolving demands of media and entertainment organizations worldwide.”

As to the benefits of working with Perifery, Leanne continued, “Our solutions are designed to secure and scale and help businesses streamline the preservation, protection and monetization of your valuable digital assets. So whether you're looking to optimize your storage infrastructure or unlock new insights through AI, Perifery is here to help support you on your journey in this digital media landscape.”

I added that I’m quite fond of the imperative we carry with us every day, to make technology that works for you, not that you have to work for. We do this by keeping things simple, and this topic came up a few times during the course of the webinar.

Media Technology Made Simple...

Keeping technology simple to use is a goal we all take seriously at Perifery. We prefer our end users not be overladen by IT chores. Taking mundane tasks off the plate of media professionals gives them the bandwidth to do what they're best at—be creative, strategize how to advance the business, and to innovate. In addition to making certain our solutions are simple to use, we thoroughly test them to make certain they work plus have an award-winning engineering support staff that stands behind them.

This is a big differentiator in a world where we are seeing a glut of AI tools hitting the market right now, many of which do not deliver as advertised.

About the NAB Show NYC

Alana is excited to attend her first NAB Show NY and shared a bit of NAB Show history with us. Did you know that the first ever NAB Show was held in NYC on October 11,1923? Not surprising given that the East Coast is the home of so many media conglomerates, production studios, tech firms, and ad agencies. Of course, the NAB New York show is spaced six months after NAB Las Vegas, providing attendees the opportunity to catch up with the latest technical developments and learn what is happening in the industry.

After 1923, the NAB Show travelled to many locations, and then finally settled in Las Vegas for their Spring Event. It wasn’t until 2015 that the NAB organization took over the CCW SatCon event at Javits Center. The event has been growing ever since (with the exception of the 2020 and 2021 cancellations).

What will you see in the Perifery Booth at the NAB Show?

For many, the main reason to go to the NAB Expo is to find solutions to pressing problems their organization is facing. For others, long-range planning for technology may be on the agenda. We hope you will make time to visit us on Level 3 of the Javits Center at Booth #858. There, we will demonstrating how Perifery integrates storage, asset management, applications, and AI functionality into a platform that can revolutionize the way organizations manage, move, tag, store, and preserve their media assets.

Cloud Solutions for Media Workflows

Jordan went into great detail about the use of on-premises cloud solutions for media workflows and asset storage. As he explained, many customers continue to expand their tier 1 storage with additional flash storage—without considering workflow efficiency. Of course, this leads to greatly increased costs over time. Pulling on his extensive experience with storage, Jordan said that around 500 terabytes of tier 1 storage is sufficient for most media customers, with a few petabytes in a nearline or active archive system. Durable cloud solutions (on-prem or private, hybrid, or public) can easily optimize storage usage and help control costs.

Elaborating on the strategies that can be employed for processing files during ingest, Jordan said that often, you will want to bring those assets into a cloud storage solution first, run AI operations to enhance metadata, and then move them to tier 1 storage as needed. Ideally, you want your storage solution to be scalable, durable, and secure, with options to move files to deeper storage tiers as needed. This not only helps to manage costs but can also improve workflow efficiency.

Jordan clarified that when mentioning on-prem cloud solutions, he was specifically talking about where things fit in the workflow. We have many customers that are still doing more ad hoc tier 1 storage (adding more flash storage) and continuing to grow that with their business. This is common because it's easy to keep adding stuff without thinking about workflow; however, the problem with that is the increased cost over time. You can radically control costs simply by storing a few petabytes of media assets into an archive solution such as those that Perifery offers. If you keep pushing more and more assets into tier 1 you end up paying a tremendous premium for storage that you are not actually using.

More and more, we are seeing industry customers using the highly durable cloud storage solutions that can sit near their tier 1 storage. By augmenting that tier 1 with intelligent archive storage, they benefit from having cost-efficient storage tiering between platforms.

AI Driving Media Transformation

Jason has seen a lot over his decades in the M&E field, working in many aspects of the media and broadcast industry. He explained that over the past decade, many companies have adopted expensive media asset management (MAM) systems to organize their content. He emphasized that these MAM systems often come with significant complexity as well as high per user cost. Jason sees using AI as an opportunity to simplify the asset management process. For example, with the right AI workflows in place, you can automate metadata generation upon ingest as well as content management across various storage types.

Coming back to the concept of simplification, Jason explained how AI can automate metadata enrichment, making content searchable and easier to manage. He warned that using AI for large libraries can be expensive, but running AI locally can control costs and ensure data security while allowing for comprehensive content management and enhancing visibility across entire content libraries.

The “Anti-MAM MAM” and Integration of AI Technology

As an alternative to complex MAMs, Jason talked about what he has been jokingly referring to as the “anti-MAM MAM.” No, we are not anti-MAM, I promise you! But, we do recognize that not every person in an organization or even every organization needs a full-blown, fancy MAM. For those who stop by the booth, we will be showing our Vision 2 interface integrated with Perifery AI+ along with popular industry MAMs such as CatDV and iconik. AI+ also integrates directly into Perifery Storage, where you can see the metadata stored directly in the objects.

Imagine eliminating complexity and having access to fully automated metadata generation, leveraging AI to do things like facial recognition, automatic translation of metadata into many different languages, and object recognition. And, not only can you train it, but it also can work with a library of over 500,000 available data sets and over 100,000 fine-tuned models that you can plug into this system right away and get started. The upcoming NAB Show will be the first time that Perifery is sharing some of this really powerful new technology, and we hope you will come by to see it and tell us about the challenges that you are facing.

Travel Tips from the Our Team

Of course, you already know that you need to pack your comfortable shoes! Here’s just a few other things you might want to consider:

Add our show session to your myNAB planner: Ready or Not? Preparing for AI in Media. Our Global Director of Marketing, Leanne Tomlin, and our CTO of M&E Solutions, Jason Perr, will present on October 9, 2024 at Theatre 2 (directly across from the Perifery booth, Level 3 of the Javits Center at Booth #858).

Schedule a meeting here or email us.

Summary of Q&A Session

What follows is a summary of the rapid-fire Q&A session we had to close out the webinar. If you have questions that are not covered below, we’d love to hear them! Just drop us a note or stop by to see us at the show.

Question (Sarah): Where is the M&E market heading with the addition of AI for workflow management?

Answer (Leanne): A recent survey by Caretta Research shows that more organizations in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry are investing in AI, though some are still cautious. During our presentation at the NAB Show, Jason will share his insights on preparing for and implementing AI in media workflows.

Question (Audience): Do you have some tips for evaluating different AI products to see whether or not they’re really a good choice for a person’s existing workloads and infrastructure?

Answer (Jason): Start simple. Many AI tools are complex and expensive. Begin by experimenting with basic AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot to understand their value. For those with existing MAMs like iconik or CatDV, those who are paying for far too many seats on their MAM software, or those without a MAM at all, Vision can serve as a low-cost alternative. With Vision and AI+, you can easily create metadata fields and use AI to fill them out, gather user feedback, and iterate from there. On-prem solutions allow for cost-effective testing and iteration without additional charges.

Question (Sarah): What are some of the things customers/prospects are concerned about right now?

Answer (Alana): Customers face challenges with content visibility and data spread across various storage types, including Cloud and LTO (tape). Concerns also include unpredictable cloud costs, egress fees, and public cloud security.

Question (Sarah): We’ve seen the storage industry shift back and forth between on-prem and cloud solutions. Once again, we are hearing a lot about Cloud repatriation. Jordan, what are your thoughts on the impact of this for the media and broadcasting industry?

Answer (Jordan): There’s a significant move back to on-premises (repatriation) due to the high cost and complexity of cloud services. While the cloud was expected to simplify operations, it has merely shifted costs without providing the anticipated savings.

Question (Audience): What about the storage platforms that Perifery has? How are they used globally, and what are the benefits compared to other platforms available?

Answer (Sarah and Leanne): Perifery storage platforms are object-based, which inherently brings numerous benefits, particularly in addressing business continuity concerns. They are among the most field-tested in the industry, with decades of experience and support from seasoned engineers. This allows us to offer versatile solutions, whether for active archiving or long-term preservation. Our platforms provide on-prem, cloud, and hybrid options, ensuring flexibility for customers. Additionally, they are interoperable with third-party integrations, such as Avid and InterConnect, and do not impose vendor lock-in. We also prioritize business continuity and disaster recovery, ensuring customers can always access their content without egress fees, which sets us apart from the competition.

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