Inside Entertainment’s Storage Revolution with Dell Technologies
In highly collaborative industries like media and entertainment, time isn’t just money—it’s opportunities. Giving your animators, designers, and visual effects artists more time means they have more space to coordinate and develop better creative outcomes. And when you have hundreds of collaborators, saving each one just a few minutes every hour can exponentially increase the amount of time spent on creative endeavors instead of, for example, waiting for software to load.
I recently had the opportunity to explore how storage innovation is enhancing collaborative workflows in the media and entertainment industry with Alex Timbs, Senior Business Development Manager of Media and Entertainment at Dell Technologies, and Scott Shadley, Leadership Marketing Director at Solidigm. During our Data Insights episode, it became clear that changes in content production workflows from pre-production to final edits are causing a fundamental shift in how storage supports content creation, moving flash storage from “nice to have” to essential for modern production pipelines.
Alex brought a unique perspective to our conversation, having spent 15 and a half years at Animal Logic (now Netflix Animation) before joining Dell. His experience as the company scaled from 80 to over 1,000 people globally provided compelling real-world context for understanding storage evolution in creative environments.
Alex saw firsthand the “serendipitous performance improvements” that emerge when organizations transition to flash storage and save minutes that add up to hours of freed-up creative time, witnessing gains that went far beyond what traditional metrics might predict. At Dell, he’s worked with customers who achieved this as well. He cited a recent Dell film studio customer who achieved 100x performance improvements—not 100% gains, but literally 100 times faster workflows.
The need for faster storage has been recently accelerated by AI and real-time workloads, which demand rapid filling and flushing of video random access memory (VRAM) on graphics processing units (GPUs). Where 24GB VRAM used to be sufficient, today’s workloads often demand 96GB or more. To keep these GPUs fed, VRAM must be filled and flushed at extreme speeds, making high-performance flash storage no longer a luxury, but an absolute necessity.
Scott emphasized how storage has transformed from an afterthought to a critical performance enabler. The concurrent access patterns required by modern workflows—where multiple users need simultaneous access to large files alongside their associated metadata—can only be efficiently handled by flash technology. Existing spinning HDD storage simply cannot deliver the random access performance required for today’s collaborative, high-resolution content creation environments.
Dell’s AI Factory serves as a robust foundation for media and entertainment organizations striving to lead amid surging data growth, new content formats, and adoption of AI-powered workflows. The platform uniquely combines validated, full-stack solutions, enabling companies to start small and scale incrementally, directly addressing the sector’s dual mandates of technological advancement and financial discipline.
At its core, Dell AI Factory leverages the PowerScale family: from the cost-effective F210, optimized for studio or departmental use, to the high-density, high-performance F910 designed for the most demanding enterprise-scale operations. This architecture empowers customers to only pay for what they need today, with the confidence they can scale both performance and capacity linearly as their needs evolve, eliminating the risks of overprovisioning or stranded investment.
The result is a unified platform that streamlines collaborative workflows (including editing, visual effects, and broadcast), consolidates data silos, and supports both on-premises and multi-cloud deployment, all with high security and efficiency. Multiple industry-leading media organizations already rely on PowerScale for everything from 4K/8K post-production to real-time virtual production and generative AI–driven analytics. Dell’s integrated data reduction, metadata solutions, and cyber protection further drive down operational costs, while the modular “grow as you go” model enables ongoing financial prudence. This makes the AI Factory a trusted partner: future-ready, validated by top global brands, backed by deep ISV partnerships, and proven to accelerate creative delivery while protecting the bottom line.
The edge computing dimension adds another layer of complexity and opportunity. A modern film production might have 10 cameras that are capable of capturing resolutions up to 17K, and the crew will want to start working with that immediately. Alex described in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) scenarios where directors give real-time creative feedback, viewing final-quality visual effects directly on on-set monitors. This surge in edge computing for ICVFX pushes the need for high-performance storage that can operate in demanding production environments, all while delivering the rock-solid reliability that tight shooting schedules require.
Interestingly, Alex compared today’s transformation to the shift from analog film to digital photography. Just as digital cameras delivered instant feedback and removed the high cost of mistakes tied to film processing, modern workflows in content production combine real-time creative feedback with minimal risk. This immediacy allows teams to iterate more often, experiment more boldly, and ultimately achieve stronger creative outcomes by removing traditional bottlenecks.
Solidigm’s collaborative approach resonates strongly with this philosophy. Rather than pushing customers toward the highest-performance solutions regardless of need, Scott described how their solutions lab and upcoming AI lab allow customers to test workloads before making commitments. This “try-before-you-buy” model helps organizations right-size their storage investments while ensuring they can achieve their performance objectives.
Looking ahead, both experts see storage demands continuing to accelerate. Organizations working in 4K today need to prepare for native 8K workflows tomorrow, requiring storage architectures that can scale both performance and capacity over multi-year timeframes.
The TechArena Take
The convergence of AI, real-time workflows, and edge computing is fundamentally reshaping storage requirements across industries, with media and entertainment serving as the proving ground for technologies that will eventually transform other verticals. As Alex noted, the future belongs to organizations that can make the most informed real-time decisions possible, and that capability fundamentally depends on having the right storage foundation in place. Dell and Solidigm’s partnership demonstrates how thoughtful collaboration can deliver solutions that scale from individual creators to global production companies.
For more insights on Dell’s storage solutions for media and entertainment, visit their website www.delltechnologies.com/powerscale or connect with Alex Timbs on LinkedIn. Learn more about Solidigm’s AI-focused storage solutions at solidigm.com/ai or reach out via LinkedIn to Scott Shadley.
In highly collaborative industries like media and entertainment, time isn’t just money—it’s opportunities. Giving your animators, designers, and visual effects artists more time means they have more space to coordinate and develop better creative outcomes. And when you have hundreds of collaborators, saving each one just a few minutes every hour can exponentially increase the amount of time spent on creative endeavors instead of, for example, waiting for software to load.
I recently had the opportunity to explore how storage innovation is enhancing collaborative workflows in the media and entertainment industry with Alex Timbs, Senior Business Development Manager of Media and Entertainment at Dell Technologies, and Scott Shadley, Leadership Marketing Director at Solidigm. During our Data Insights episode, it became clear that changes in content production workflows from pre-production to final edits are causing a fundamental shift in how storage supports content creation, moving flash storage from “nice to have” to essential for modern production pipelines.
Alex brought a unique perspective to our conversation, having spent 15 and a half years at Animal Logic (now Netflix Animation) before joining Dell. His experience as the company scaled from 80 to over 1,000 people globally provided compelling real-world context for understanding storage evolution in creative environments.
Alex saw firsthand the “serendipitous performance improvements” that emerge when organizations transition to flash storage and save minutes that add up to hours of freed-up creative time, witnessing gains that went far beyond what traditional metrics might predict. At Dell, he’s worked with customers who achieved this as well. He cited a recent Dell film studio customer who achieved 100x performance improvements—not 100% gains, but literally 100 times faster workflows.
The need for faster storage has been recently accelerated by AI and real-time workloads, which demand rapid filling and flushing of video random access memory (VRAM) on graphics processing units (GPUs). Where 24GB VRAM used to be sufficient, today’s workloads often demand 96GB or more. To keep these GPUs fed, VRAM must be filled and flushed at extreme speeds, making high-performance flash storage no longer a luxury, but an absolute necessity.
Scott emphasized how storage has transformed from an afterthought to a critical performance enabler. The concurrent access patterns required by modern workflows—where multiple users need simultaneous access to large files alongside their associated metadata—can only be efficiently handled by flash technology. Existing spinning HDD storage simply cannot deliver the random access performance required for today’s collaborative, high-resolution content creation environments.
Dell’s AI Factory serves as a robust foundation for media and entertainment organizations striving to lead amid surging data growth, new content formats, and adoption of AI-powered workflows. The platform uniquely combines validated, full-stack solutions, enabling companies to start small and scale incrementally, directly addressing the sector’s dual mandates of technological advancement and financial discipline.
At its core, Dell AI Factory leverages the PowerScale family: from the cost-effective F210, optimized for studio or departmental use, to the high-density, high-performance F910 designed for the most demanding enterprise-scale operations. This architecture empowers customers to only pay for what they need today, with the confidence they can scale both performance and capacity linearly as their needs evolve, eliminating the risks of overprovisioning or stranded investment.
The result is a unified platform that streamlines collaborative workflows (including editing, visual effects, and broadcast), consolidates data silos, and supports both on-premises and multi-cloud deployment, all with high security and efficiency. Multiple industry-leading media organizations already rely on PowerScale for everything from 4K/8K post-production to real-time virtual production and generative AI–driven analytics. Dell’s integrated data reduction, metadata solutions, and cyber protection further drive down operational costs, while the modular “grow as you go” model enables ongoing financial prudence. This makes the AI Factory a trusted partner: future-ready, validated by top global brands, backed by deep ISV partnerships, and proven to accelerate creative delivery while protecting the bottom line.
The edge computing dimension adds another layer of complexity and opportunity. A modern film production might have 10 cameras that are capable of capturing resolutions up to 17K, and the crew will want to start working with that immediately. Alex described in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) scenarios where directors give real-time creative feedback, viewing final-quality visual effects directly on on-set monitors. This surge in edge computing for ICVFX pushes the need for high-performance storage that can operate in demanding production environments, all while delivering the rock-solid reliability that tight shooting schedules require.
Interestingly, Alex compared today’s transformation to the shift from analog film to digital photography. Just as digital cameras delivered instant feedback and removed the high cost of mistakes tied to film processing, modern workflows in content production combine real-time creative feedback with minimal risk. This immediacy allows teams to iterate more often, experiment more boldly, and ultimately achieve stronger creative outcomes by removing traditional bottlenecks.
Solidigm’s collaborative approach resonates strongly with this philosophy. Rather than pushing customers toward the highest-performance solutions regardless of need, Scott described how their solutions lab and upcoming AI lab allow customers to test workloads before making commitments. This “try-before-you-buy” model helps organizations right-size their storage investments while ensuring they can achieve their performance objectives.
Looking ahead, both experts see storage demands continuing to accelerate. Organizations working in 4K today need to prepare for native 8K workflows tomorrow, requiring storage architectures that can scale both performance and capacity over multi-year timeframes.
The TechArena Take
The convergence of AI, real-time workflows, and edge computing is fundamentally reshaping storage requirements across industries, with media and entertainment serving as the proving ground for technologies that will eventually transform other verticals. As Alex noted, the future belongs to organizations that can make the most informed real-time decisions possible, and that capability fundamentally depends on having the right storage foundation in place. Dell and Solidigm’s partnership demonstrates how thoughtful collaboration can deliver solutions that scale from individual creators to global production companies.
For more insights on Dell’s storage solutions for media and entertainment, visit their website www.delltechnologies.com/powerscale or connect with Alex Timbs on LinkedIn. Learn more about Solidigm’s AI-focused storage solutions at solidigm.com/ai or reach out via LinkedIn to Scott Shadley.
.png)
