Let’s chuck Egress right out the window.

Long gone are the days of filing cabinets and manilla folders—the creative industry has undeniably entered the modern era. Utilizing sophisticated, digital filing systems with infinite capacity, today’s most advantageous businesses are tapping into powerful on-premises and cloud-based solutions to accelerate their ability to store, share, and edit media from anywhere.

These teams, even the largest, are also adopting remote and hybrid workflows more than ever, requiring studio leads to more frequently seek out cloud-based storage platforms. As more creatives, systems integrators, and decision-makers explore the opportunity cloud storage provides, it’s only a matter of time before the term “egress” appears. Let’s take the opportunity to explain how this concept can affect your collaborative process, your monthly budget, your ability to forecast costs, and ultimately why choosing Suite’s cloud storage—and eliminating egress fees—might be the best decision you make today.

What is Egress?

The term “Egress” might be unfamiliar to most; yet it’s one of the things that can have the biggest and most unpredictable impact on the cloud storage cost every month. Many CSPs will let you upload as much data as you want into the cloud—but as soon as you start pulling that data down to your local computer, or moving it elsewhere, you’ll be charged a fee. That’s egress.

Egress, in the context of cloud storage, refers to the transfer of data from a cloud storage provider (CSP), such as AWS, to anywhere outside of that CSP’s boundary. Every time this happens, there’s a fee associated with the action. These actions include any movement of data outside of the current CSP, such as streaming audio or video content, or accessing photos for local, high-resolution editing; sharing assets with external collaborators who need to download the media; backing up the data on a different server; or even relocating it within a single CSP.

How does Egress actually affect my studio/agency?

As a media professional working directly with complex files, or a technology-lead seeking to implement the latest asset management systems at your studio, you’re dealing directly with substantial amounts of data regularly. Simply put, Egress is difficult to monitor—it’s an action that can seem harmless, and a simple misconfiguration of cloud infrastructure can lead to thousands of dollars in unforeseen fees. Let’s dive deeper on how egress can impact your workflow:

1. Fees, Fees, Fees: If your cloud provider charges for egress, frequently downloading large files can lead to hefty expenses, significantly affecting your budget and your bottom line.
2. Costly Collaboration: In a collaborative environment, multiple team members may need to download files. Egress will influence how smoothly this process goes, and how much it costs.
3. Missed Opportunities: Self-managing data on the cloud can require significant administrative overhead, pulling creative professionals away from their primary tasks. This shift in focus can disrupt workflow efficiency and stifle progress.

Can I avoid Egress when using cloud storage?

The simplest way to avoid egress is to choose Suite’s egrees-free cloud storage. We view egress as an unnecessary tax on media teams and an unpredictable burden for the individuals managing their budgets, so we’ve decided to eliminate it once-and-for-all.

The benefits of Suite’s cloud storage:

Choosing Suite means adopting an advanced cloud-native filesystem as your team’s central source of truth for every file, without the need to download or sync, and without egress charges. Better yet, Suite handles all of the heavy lifting associated with operating your studio’s cloud object storage, so your team can stay focused on the tasks that matter, without worrying about managing media, shipping hard drives, or questioning the security of your data.

When Suite becomes a part of your creative workflow, you’ll experience:

1. Predictable Budgeting: Without the variable costs of egress, budgeting for individual projects and the bigger picture becomes more predictable than ever. Pro Tip: Add the cost of your studio’s cloud storage as a project expense—just like you would add the cost of buying new hard drives or shipping them—and easily “bill back” your cloud usage charge.
2. Instant File Access: Egress-free data streaming on Suite means real-time access to your files without the need to download or sync between individual team members. This is revolutionary for anyone who needs their team to have real-time access to media.
3. Enhanced Collaboration: When team members can freely access files without egress constraints, collaboration between remote employees becomes smoother, and your studio’s creative process can flow as if everyone is working in the same room together.

Final Thought:

While there can be frustrating fluctuations in monthly service bills—even with cloud storage—finding ways to mitigate these costs and reduce expenditures typically requires discipline, time, and a certain savvy that most creative teams shouldn’t have to dedicate their resources toward.

With Suite, it’s possible to gain more control over your expenses and your team’s trajectory. You’ll predict and forecast your storage needs with more accuracy; and you’ll gain the performance you need to ensure your team and your remote/hybrid workflow runs efficiently.

Suite makes it so teams of any size sharing digital media can work from anywhere and maintain local-style access to their assets while saving significant costs on egress. While the creatives continue buzzing on their work, your studio’s accounting department, business leadership, and the folks in IT can easily appreciate the value they’re seeing, the money they're saving, and the headaches that no longer exist. Choosing Suite’s cloud storage makes it simple.

Click here to get in touch with our team today.