Media & Entertainment Company Streamlining Cloud Storage Integration

This company operates within the media and entertainment industry, managing large-scale digital assets in a cloud-first environment. Their IT and admin teams support a distributed workforce that relies heavily on cloud storage for media files, with data stored primarily in Amazon S3 buckets and plans to replicate in additional cloud storage solutions. The company handles substantial storage volumes, on the order of tens of terabytes, and is considering scalability and cost-efficiency for their infrastructure as they grow.

The company has transitioned from traditional on-premise file servers to a fully cloud-based storage solution using LucidLink. Their media assets reside in Amazon S3 buckets, supplemented by Wasabi cloud storage for replication and archival purposes. This setup enables remote access to files without maintaining physical infrastructure. The workflow centers around accessing and managing media files via LucidLink’s streaming technology, which replaces conventional file server access.

While LucidLink has provided a cloud-first solution, the company is concerned about potential pricing increases and vendor lock-in. They want to explore alternatives that may offer better pricing stability, enhanced features, or greater flexibility with storage options. Additionally, they are interested in understanding the complexity and feasibility of migrating off LucidLink without disrupting their current operations or losing metadata and file integrity.

Shade offers a straightforward migration path from LucidLink, backed by a dedicated data migration team and custom-built platform that ensures file integrity, folder structure, and metadata are preserved through a phased approach. Shade supports “bring your own storage” (BYOS), allowing companies to continue using their existing S3 buckets or Wasabi storage by pointing Shade’s system directly to their infrastructure via API integrations. This flexibility reduces the need for wholesale data migration if the company prefers to retain their current storage backend. Alternatively, Shade can fully migrate media to their own Cloudflare R2 active storage and hot archival storage, optimized for low latency and no egress fees between active and archive tiers. Shade’s enterprise-grade features extend beyond LucidLink’s capabilities, tailored to large-scale media workflows with petabyte-level scalability.