So many customers I talk to want to upload their offline data stores into the cloud. Yet, no one wants to spend hours and hours inserting tapes, connecting older hard disks, or figuring out how to digitize and upload film. Well, I’m excited to announce that together with our partners Microsoft Azure is making it easy with our Offline Media Important Program. This partner-enabled service makes it easy to move data into Azure from almost any media, such as tapes, optical drives, hard disks, or film.
Why migrate your current storage media to Azure? Azure provides a range of flexible storage options from low-cost, archive storage to high-performance, SSD-based storage. You simply choose the storage tier and we take care of the rest. And once the data is available in Azure, higher-value scenarios around analysis, transformation, and distribution can be unlocked. Here are some of the common uses:
Media and entertainment
Offline media import is a great way for entertainment companies to modernize their content assets and take advantage of an array of cloud services such as cognitive services and media analytics. I’m actually at NAB this week talking to media companies about how this program can transform production workflows and breathe new life into existing content. You can learn more about Microsoft Azure, and how it can help your media workflows and business by reading Tad Brockway’s blog post.
Backup and archive
Azure’s global, highly-available, tiered storage model makes it a natural cloud destination for your backup and archival media. Additionally, with broad ISV support and rich business continuity solutions including Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery, you can easily use Azure as the DR platform for your data and applications. This reduces downtime, and provides for faster recovery in the event of an outage.
Data and analytics
Tape is also a common retention media for large data repositories such as seismic surveys and genomics sequencing. While this information is locked away on tape, it is effectively inert to higher-order analysis. Migrating the data to Azure can enable richer analytics tools, such as HDInsight and Machine Learning, to derive deeper insights.
Partners help you move to the cloud
Our partners work with virtually all types of media, whether that be disks or tapes, SAN or NAS, or even video cassettes or 35mm. And they can work with you, where your media currently is, all over the globe. Check our Offline Media Import website to find one near you.
Whether your data is terabytes, petabytes, or exabytes, the Offline Media Import Program is a great opportunity to move data off existing legacy media and into the Azure cloud. Best of all, Azure can be your data’s enduring home – and the last data migration you’ll have to do!