Back to On‑Prem: Why Creative Teams Are Leading a Storage Resurgence

Is the cloud’s reign starting to wane? In a surprising trend, creative teams – from video editors to post-production houses – are rethinking the “cloud-everything” mindset and bringing storage back in-house.

Tim Anderson, CEO & CTO of DigitalGlue and creative.space, Murietta, California, USA

What sounds old-school is a cutting-edge movement. Even industry voices note that “on-prem storage is having a resurgence” as companies find upgrading on-site hardware can mitigate rising cloud costs. This shift isn’t nostalgia for creatives working with massive media files and tight deadlines – it’s about performance, cost, and control.

Why On-Prem Storage is Back (Especially for Creatives)

Creative professionals deal with huge video files, high-resolution images, and complex projects that strain typical cloud setups. Here’s why many are gravitating back to on-premise storage solutions:

• Speed & Performance:

  • Local storage delivers predictable high-speed performance for multi-stream video editing and heavy graphics without the lag of internet bandwidth or server congestion. When your team is editing 4K footage or complex animations, there’s no waiting on a slow cloud transfer – everything is on-site and lightning-fast. Extremely low latency is critical for real-time collaboration, and keeping data close to the users ensures minimal delays.

• Cost Efficiency:

  • Public cloud storage often starts cheap but can surprise you later. As projects multiply, so do monthly bills – especially with egress fees and unpredictable usage charges for downloading or moving data. On-prem storage, by contrast, has no hidden fees and a more predictable cost structure. Many firms now realize that enhancing on-prem hardware can be a faster way to reduce escalating cloud expenses. Over a project’s lifespan, owning your storage can be far more budget-friendly for large volumes of media.

• Security & Control:

  • When your footage and creative assets live in-house, you know exactly where your data is and who can access it. Teams avoid the risks of putting sensitive content on shared cloud infrastructure. Keeping storage on-premise adds layers of protection – you can restrict physical access, even “air-gap” systems (off the internet) for ultimate security. And you’re not at the mercy of a third-party provider’s outages or policy changes. This reliability and control are invaluable when a deadline looms or when dealing with confidential projects.

• Avoiding Cloud Bottlenecks:

  • Cloud-based workflows can introduce bottlenecks that frustrate creative work. Ever try to download hundreds of gigabytes from the cloud on a tight deadline? Transfer times and internet hiccups can bring productivity to a halt. By contrast, an on-prem shared storage means your team accesses files over the local network at LAN speeds – no waiting on an external server or fighting for bandwidth. Your read/write performance won’t randomly suffer due to someone else’s traffic spike or an overloaded data center. For collaborative editing sessions, this consistency is a game-changer.

Not Your Grandpa’s Server Closet: Modern On-Prem Solutions

Bringing storage back on-prem doesn’t mean reverting to the old days of unruly server racks and DIY maintenance. A new class of on-premises managed storage is emerging – essentially private-cloud technology at your office, but managed for you. This is where creative.space shines, offering a modern, hassle-free twist on local storage.

Modern on-prem storage appliances pack high-performance hardware into a turnkey solution for creative teams

Unlike traditional NAS or SAN boxes that demanded a hefty capital investment and a full-time IT team, creative.space provides its storage as a fully managed service. That means:

• No massive upfront purchase – you can spread out costs with a flat monthly or annual rate. This subscription model turns storage into an operating expense, much like cloud, but with guaranteed on-site performance. You get “the freedom to upgrade to the latest technologies, reduce capital expenditures, and rely on a predictable fixed monthly cost for hardware, maintenance, and support.”
• No IT headaches – the system comes with 24/7 proactive support and monitoring. Complex setup and tuning are handled by the vendor, not your team. Built-in software features and a simple web interface abstract away the geeky stuff (like managing network mounts or user permissions). Space’s platform was designed so that even non-technical users can administer storage through an easy UI – effectively turning each system into a “datacenter-in-a-box” with enterprise capabilities, minus the usual complexity.
• All-in-one functionality – this isn’t just a dumb box of disks on your floor. It’s a holistic solution bundling high-speed hardware with collaboration tools. For example, space includes user authentication, remote access via VPN, and even built-in file transfer and preview features, all integrated out of the box. This means creative teams can collaborate seamlessly on the same files, whether they’re in the office or remote.

Crucially, these new on-prem solutions bridge the gap with the cloud rather than exist in a silo. Private cloud capabilities are often baked in. creative.space, for instance, offers an optional //CLOUD component that lets you mount your on-prem storage over the internet for remote editing with proxy files, or keep an off-site backup in their datacenter – without typical cloud ingress/egress fees. In other words, you enjoy the best of both worlds: on-prem speeds locally, and cloud-like accessibility for collaborators anywhere.

TFT 1957 (Television & Film Technologies): What’s Next in Tech: NAB & ISE 2025 Highlights

When the Cloud Fell Short: Creatives Leading the Trend

This on-premise revival isn’t happening in isolation – creative teams are at the forefront of this industry trend. Tired of hitting the limits of cloud-only workflows, many studios and content creators have already made the leap to high-performance local storage (powered by modern services like creative.space) and are reaping the benefits:

• From Juggling Drives to Saving Hours:

  • YouTube channel Brat TV reached the limits of shuttling USB drives and slow cloud transfers. After switching to an on-premise shared storage solution, they saved 12 hours per day in time that was previously wasted managing and moving files. What used to be a frantic juggle of drives turned into real-time collaboration – editors now work off the same central storage simultaneously.

• 4K Workflows Without Breaking the Bank:

  • Boutique post-production house Real by Fake (formerly Local Hero Post) handles multiple 4K HDR shows and found that using space’s on-prem storage let them do so “without breaking the bank,” as they no longer had to offload tons of high-res footage to expensive cloud storage. The predictable costs and performance meant they could take on more projects confidently, knowing their storage won’t be a bottleneck or budget-buster.

• At-Scale Editing, On Location:

  • The team behind Pickathon, a large music festival, used on-prem managed storage to support 16 editors on-site, working with footage from 38 camera crews in real-time. This would be nearly impossible to pull off with a purely cloud workflow (imagine trying to upload tens of terabytes from a festival venue). Instead, their on-prem system handled the massive ingest and instant access, proving that even field productions can benefit from local high-speed storage.

Creative teams collaborating on high-resolution video projects need uninterrupted, fast access to media – a key reason they are embracing on-prem solutions.

These success stories underscore a larger narrative: creative professionals are pragmatists. They will use whatever setup best serves the art and the deadline. Over the past decade, cloud platforms have promised a lot – global access, easy scaling, and simplified IT – and those are real advantages for certain tasks. But when it comes to high-bandwidth, time-sensitive creative workflows, many teams discovered the cloud’s downsides firsthand (latency, surprise costs, or even the inability to work when the internet is down). So they’ve pioneered a hybrid approach: keep the heavy-duty storage and editing on-premise where it runs fastest and use the cloud sparingly or in targeted ways.

The Future: Flexibility and Performance Over Hype

The resurgence of on-premise managed storage isn’t about rejecting the cloud; it’s about choosing the right tool for the job. Creative teams are leading by example, showing the whole industry that performance, cost control, and reliability are paramount for certain workflows – and that sometimes means keeping data close to home. With new managed solutions that remove the old burdens of on-site infrastructure, moving back on-prem no longer means going back in time. It means moving forward with a smarter, tailored strategy.

In an era of endless cloud hype, this trend is a reminder that not all clouds have silver linings, especially for creatives on a deadline. By embracing high-performance on-prem storage – turbocharged by services like creative.space’s managed platform – creative professionals are architecting a future where they control their assets, accelerate their workflows, and still collaborate globally without missing a beat. It’s a savvy middle ground that’s proving one size does not fit all, and the rest of the tech world is starting to take note of this creative-led storage revolution.