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Creative Media Company Streamlining Cloud Storage Integration
Company Situation
The company operates within the creative media production industry, managing large volumes of video and film assets. Their team includes a core group of users along with remote freelancers collaborating on ongoing projects. The scale of their storage needs is substantial, with active projects ranging between 20 to 50 terabytes of data annually and a total archive size exceeding 100 terabytes.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company relies heavily on Dropbox for cloud storage, maintaining approximately 120 terabytes of data across multiple licenses. For archival content, they utilize cold storage solutions such as personal servers and NAS (Network Attached Storage) setups at their home office. Remote team members access files through Dropbox, while the company juggles physical hard drives for older archives.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
High Cost: The transition of Dropbox’s unlimited business plan to a per-terabyte pricing model has dramatically increased annual expenses, approaching $3,000 per year for 9-10 licenses covering 120 terabytes.
Inefficient Archival Storage: Maintaining large amounts of cold storage at home leads to increased energy costs and heat dissipation challenges, making it unsustainable.
Fragmented Toolset: The company faces difficulties coordinating active projects and remote teams due to the limitations of Dropbox’s support for collaborative workflows and the need to manage multiple storage and project management tools.
Connectivity Barriers: Operating from an older neighborhood with limited internet speeds impacts the efficiency of cloud workflows.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a unified cloud storage solution combining active ("hot") and archival ("cold") storage under one platform. By migrating active project files to Shade’s cloud, hosted on Cloudflare R2, the company can reduce reliance on expensive Dropbox licenses while supporting real-time collaboration for remote users. Archival data can be stored cost-effectively on Wasabi, integrated seamlessly within Shade’s environment. This consolidation replaces multiple disparate tools with a single source of truth, improving workflow efficiency and cost management.
Benefits
- Up to 70% cost savings compared to managing multiple tools such as Dropbox, Frame.io, and LucidLink separately.
- Simplified storage architecture combining hot and archival data within one platform.
- Improved collaboration capabilities for remote teams with real-time access to active projects.
- Reduced overhead for physical cold storage, lowering energy and maintenance costs.
- Enterprise-grade cloud hosting leveraging Cloudflare and Wasabi for reliability and scalability.
- Transparent pricing tailored to user count and storage needs, allowing flexible scaling.