2017 global media and entertainment storage customer · pdf filethe converged solutions are...

2017 Global Media and Entertainment Storage Customer Value Leadership Award

GLOBAL MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT STORAGE CUSTOMER VALUE LEADERSHIP AWARD

2017

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2017 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Hitachi Vantara’s Customer Impact and Business Impact .......................................... 4

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 6

Significance of Customer Value Leadership .................................................................... 7

Understanding Customer Value Leadership .................................................................... 7

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 8

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ....................... 8

Research Methodology .......................................................................................... 8

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................... 9

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 10



Background and Company Performance Industry Challenges Digital video has proliferated into a content-rich media and entertainment (M&E) ecosystem ranging from traditional film studios and broadcast television, to over the top streaming services, and upstart non-traditional producers and distributors. With digital cameras, producers generate more raw content and end up with high shooting ratios, where the end product represents a small portion/fraction of the massive amount of data that must exist somewhere and consequently strains storage capacity. Storing and transferring this data consumes substantial primary storage space and networking bandwidth, especially in high-definition formats and when numerous users draw files from the same source and work collaboratively. The content explosion and transition to higher pixel data drive revenue growth for storage and management providers. Frost & Sullivan projects the global media and entertainment storage market to reach $7.8 billion by 2022, increasing at a 10.5% compound annual growth rate from 2015 to 2022.

Newly produced raw footage and digitization of older content are hastening the storage crunch. Flash and cloud storage solutions are witnessing more widespread adoption, offering greater flexibility and reliability. However, as production, delivery, and archiving of content in high-definition, 4K, and 3-D formats grow beyond the means of internal resources, M&E organizations will look to external storage solution providers. Moreover, Frost & Sullivan predicts another growth spike after 2020 as the deployment of 8K video and high dynamic range (HDR) formats achieve wider adoption. Media companies, both early and late adopters of higher pixel formats, require new storage models to remain agile and keep workflows running smoothly.

M&E organizations are slowly and unevenly moving legacy data formats and storage infrastructure from on-premise deployments to digital hybrid and cloud environments. This transition represents a significant investment of both capital and effort, where downtime is unacceptable, especially for broadcast television. Storage and retrieval of massive amounts of high-resolution video, by multiple simultaneous co-creators, is an essential component of workflows for M&E producers.

Rather than settling for one-time deployments, M&E clients find longer lasting value through comprehensive services that break down siloes and consolidate vendors, in addition to delivering high performance, scalability, availability/security to protect investments and integrations that leverage a broader ecosystem. As consumers demonstrate a preference for highly produced content, the post-production vertical is multiplying, and producers will need storage platforms that smooth workflows across several systems. Petabytes of storage will be necessary for content creators of all sizes, not only enterprises and Hollywood or New York studios. M&E storage services must prepare to help customers not only to conserve data but also to monetize and exploit assets while accommodating massive growth in storage needs for years to come.



Incremental expenditures on ad-hoc storage additions to aging hardware shirk the need for better infrastructure that can meet future storage needs. M&E organizations digitizing data archives from legacy media formats into a new system risk dislocating and delaying assets without an organized and strategic process for managing the data. Organizations with siloed data storage and no unified strategy risk falling farther and farther behind as data and monetary requirements multiply and become more complex—jeopardizing investments and negatively impacting efficiency. Overall, multivendor information technology (IT) strategies are proving more cumbersome than helpful for organizations navigating digital transformation.

Hitachi Vantara’s Customer Impact and Business Impact First as Hitachi Data Systems, and now as an integral part of Hitachi Vantara, this digital arm of industrial powerhouse and parent company Hitachi, Ltd., has been bringing IT infrastructure expertise and a history of innovation to bear on the storage solution needs of M&E customers. Hitachi Vantara delivers comprehensive solutions that meet storage needs as well as larger enterprise concerns so organizations can achieve their goals efficiently.

Engaging Differently to Solve the Underlying Needs

Frost & Sullivan notes that Hitachi Vantara takes a unique approach to storage issues. Rather than simply pitching data speed and cost rates, Hitachi Vantara engages customers directly, asking “What are you trying to do?” to discern exact needs. By seeking to understand the goals of an organization’s storage needs and data flows, Hitachi Vantara is able to offer solutions that address the root of the issue with a comprehensive solution. Where previously an organization sought several separate and specialized systems, Hitachi Vantara can implement solutions that increase workflow efficiency and consolidate a diverse mix of vendors under one solution—breaking down workflow, video production, asset management, and business application silos. For organizations moving to digitize data assets, typically from legacy tape systems, Hitachi Vantara can introduce a file system or object store that leverages a high-performance array for active data and transitions to a modern archive solution as well as enterprise IT systems all with one point of contact for the entire process.

Efficiency through Integration and Blended Systems

Under a single umbrella, Hitachi Vantara coordinates a broad portfolio of products and services geared to M&E organizations: for active video management, for many disparate users simultaneously accessing data, or for monetizing archival data. Hitachi Vantara works with customers to design an optimal solution for M&E data needs, combining video systems with content management systems and object storage for archival needs. With Hitachi Vantara deploying data management systems and object storage systems, customers gain the advantages of efficiency with integrated hardware and software; less time is spent recovering video and doing backups, there are fewer opportunities for corruption, and overall total cost of ownership is lower. Frost & Sullivan recognizes Hitachi Vantara for delivering solutions that address an organization’s deeper concerns, blending



systems for efficiency based on customers’ real needs, and featuring high-performing and reliable storage systems.

Scalable and Flexible for Short-term and Long-term Needs Beyond simply selling a “bit bucket,” Hitachi Vantara creates product and service solutions that allow M&E customers to leverage their assets over time and improve a digital workflow. With high-performance storage arrays, including 100% guaranteed availability for safe and fast access to data, Hitachi Vantara storage solutions can deliver flexible replication options between geographically separated data centers to maintain business continuity for mission-critical data needs and applications.

Hitachi Vantara is a broad provider capable of deploying a menu of options. The company engages customers to uncover what they actually need—be it augmenting existing systems or digitizing with a clean slate. With a portfolio featuring many iterations and combinations of Network Attached Storage, Storage Area Networks, or object storage, Hitachi Vantara coordinates the optimal solutions for customer needs, such as fast archive retrieval, file sharing, or metadata tagging and analytics. Moreover, Hitachi Vantara deployments are highly scalable and flexible. System configurations include easy-to-add capacity to expand on demand. They allow customers to virtualize storage without taking the system down or institute a capacity-on-demand model, charging only as data requirements expand. Hitachi Vantara specializes in object storage solutions for M&E organizations where metadata tagging makes the video more accessible and easy to find—lowering costs and reducing recall time so that organizations can effectively monetize archives.

Convergence and Automation for Monetizing Archives

Harnessing the cutting-edge technology developed by the larger Hitachi family of companies, Hitachi Vantara bridges IT technology and operational technology so that hardware and software (such as camera and storage) will work seamlessly and blend data effectively. Directing go-forward automation efforts with an eye toward data intelligence, Hitachi Vantara leverages insights from Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and automation to deliver smarter solutions. The company’s data infrastructure (applicable across applications and not limited to M&E), allows editors, publishers, and archives to analyze and recall data assets quickly. The 2015 acquisition of Pentaho drives forward innovation in data analytics and being able to better mine and analyze the meta-data rich pools of video data. Moreover, internally developed software tools, such as Hitachi Automation Director, implement automated configurations, saving time and effort to create templates, allowing a team to easily add capacity (or other tasks) in a single push of a button across storage, servers, and networking. Further, as customers begin connecting operational and IT technology systems, the Hitachi Vantara ability to bring IT analytics and automation tools together means that systems management at scale is far easier, and helps customers deal with the rising tide of stored information. Soon, with artificial intelligence and machine learning from Hitachi’s algorithm development and data science lab, Hitachi Vantara storage solutions can form a closed loop of software layers,



informing systems how to change in ways that maximize capacity, speed, and IT priorities.

A Continued Legacy of Innovation through Impeccable Service

With so many organizations negotiating the transition to digital systems, Hitachi Vantara operates with a “co-creation” philosophy to build solutions to problems with the aim to transform existing assets into monetary potential. Hitachi Vantara believes in working with customers to find new ways to leverage assets for attainable long-term value, not simply to provide a shelf in which to place old video assets. With its history of providing IT solutions to airlines and finance clients, Hitachi Vantara is acutely aware of the mission-critical data protection and at-all-costs availability that customers require—a cognizance that permeates into all aspects of the IT systems division. The company prides itself on problem-solving and customer service, adopting the notion that any data issue is its problem until proven otherwise and then working with customers to resolve it.

Moreover, the Hitachi, Ltd., heritage of industrial innovation resonates with customers across sectors. This brand reputation for reliability and safety continues into the data management space. The overall company leads the way in patent creation in flash storage and related technologies, demonstrating the power of Hitachi's innovation engine. Furthermore, Hitachi, Ltd., and Hitachi Vantara prioritize working closely with international counterparts, allowing the M&E storage team to collaborate on converged solutions and software across the parent company. The converged solutions are helping the Hitachi Vantara M&E storage team leverage the scalability lessons of systems designed for IoT and data center management, as the team leans on its experience in scaling enormous amounts of data.

Conclusion Media and entertainment organizations are dealing with an explosion of content and consequently facing a storage needs crisis. With a heritage of industrial innovation and a wealth of information technology infrastructure experience, Hitachi Vantara seeks to uncover the underlying goals and necessities an organization faces in devising a data storage strategy. Approaching the issue with the purpose of providing long-term and lasting value, Hitachi Vantara “co-creates” with customers’ solutions that blend storage and business application systems for efficiency. Hitachi Vantara leverages the broad background of Hitachi’s industrial innovations and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and automation and is capable of delivering whatever storage configuration a customer desires. With a dedication to customer value, the company implements solutions that help customers access storage more efficiently and monetize assets, with high-performance deployments and 100% availability.

For its strong overall performance in the media and entertainment storage market, Hitachi Vantara earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Global Customer Value Leadership Award.



Significance of Customer Value Leadership Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from a company and then making the decision to return time and again. Delighting customers is, therefore, the cornerstone of any successful growth strategy. To achieve these dual goals (growth and customer delight), an organization must be best-in-class in three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the brand, and differentiating from the competition.

Understanding Customer Value Leadership Customer Value Leadership is defined and measured by two macro-level categories: Customer Impact and Business Impact. These two sides work together to make customers feel valued and confident in their products’ quality and long shelf life. This dual satisfaction translates into repeat purchases and a high lifetime of customer value.



Key Benchmarking Criteria For the Customer Value Leadership Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated two key factors—Customer Impact and Business Impact—according to the criteria identified below.

Customer Impact Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Business Impact Criterion 1: Financial Performance Criterion 2: Customer Acquisition Criterion 3: Operational Efficiency Criterion 4: Growth Potential Criterion 5: Human Capital

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards Research Methodology Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research methodology represents the analytical rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree-view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies. Too often companies make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission. Successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the 360-degree research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry participants and for identifying those performing at best-in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN THE CHAOS



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices Frost & Sullivan analysts follow a 10-step process to evaluate Award candidates and assess their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the Awards are based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify Award recipient candidates from around the globe

• Conduct in-depth industry research

• Identify emerging sectors • Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

• Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

• Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

• Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning of all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

• Confirm best-practice criteria • Examine eligibility of all

candidates • Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4 Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

• Brainstorm ranking options • Invite multiple perspectives

on candidates’ performance • Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5 Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

• Share findings • Strengthen cases for

candidate eligibility • Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized Award candidates

6 Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on Award candidates’ eligibility

• Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

• Pressure-test fit with criteria • Confirm inclusion of all

eligible candidates

Final list of eligible Award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official Award consideration materials

• Perform final performance benchmarking activities

• Write nominations • Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8 Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice Award recipient

• Review analysis with panel • Build consensus • Select recipient

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform Award recipient of Award recognition

• Inspire the organization for continued success

• Celebrate the recipient’s performance

Announcement of Award and plan for how recipient can use the Award

10 Take strategic action

Upon licensing, company is able to share Award news with stakeholders and customers

• Coordinate media outreach • Design a marketing plan • Assess Award’s role in future

strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s Award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.

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