Pixitmedia executives Abhijit Dey and Barry Evans see a media industry at a crossroads, facing challenges from escalating cloud costs, unwieldy archives, and the need for better collaboration tools. In an interview during the NAB Show, the leaders explained how their company’s rebrand from Perifery to Pixitmedia resulted from strategic acquisition and market positioning, with the decision ultimately coming down to brand equity. “Between Perifery and Pixitmedia, the branding was a simple exercise,” said Dey, chief product and strategy officer at Pixitmedia. “Let’s just accept the brand that has better equity in the market.” Dey explained that their parent company, a 20-plus-year-old IT infrastructure provider, launched Perifery specifically for the media industry. After acquiring Object Matrix in the first year and Pixitmedia from a French semiconductor company called Kalray, they moved forward under the Pixitmedia name.
Dey sees several trends shaping the industry, including “figuring out the way to use AI and to consume it slowly and steadily,” moving beyond the initial hype. He also noted challenges from the growing adoption of 4K and 8K video, which creates pressure on backend systems to handle larger file sizes and faster ingest speeds. Evans highlighted a positive shift toward interoperability in the industry, with previously closed applications now opening up through APIs and plug-in infrastructures. “We’ve been pushing [interoperability] for a very, very long time, and now, I think just this past two years it seems to [be happening],” said Evans, SVP of product development at Pixitmedia. “Customers are starting to hold the vendors to account more than anything else.”
Both executives acknowledged significant economic challenges facing the industry. Evans noted that current conditions have affected their customers, particularly in expansion scenarios. “If I want to expand, if I’ve got my post facility in L.A., and I want to bid for a new project, and I know I need to hire another 20 people, where am I going to get those 20 people from? Where am I going to put those 20 people?” Evans said, adding that infrastructure costs, housing and potential tariffs all complicate expansion decisions. A key issue facing Pixitmedia customers is cloud costs, with many organizations reconsidering their cloud strategies. Dey noted that while some workloads belong in the cloud, many organizations moved workloads that didn’t need to be there. “The productivity, the value add of the moving is offset by the cost of the egress. So, they’re coming back,” Dey said, explaining that many customers are returning to edge computing or private cloud solutions that provide “cloud-like handling” without the costs of public hyperscalers.
Archive management emerged as another pain point. Evans noted that many clients approach them with two primary concerns: expanding their operations to new locations and managing their archives effectively. “I have no idea what’s in my archives. Please help me,” Evans said, quoting a common customer request. The executives observed that while customers often focus on the cost and difficulty of archive management, they frequently don’t realize there’s potential value in those archives. Dey suggested this represents an opportunity for education about data monetization. Pixitmedia is moving beyond storage conversations to focus more on applications that help content creators. Dey emphasized their goal to “make the data global, make it searchable, make it editable, and then make it storable in a good HSM [hierarchical storage management] technique.” The company is also forming strategic partnerships with application vendors like Grass Valley to improve workflow integration, as Dey noted that “vendor-to-vendor integration has kind of failed in the industry.”
As broadcasters and post-production facilities navigate economic headwinds, cloud transitions and archive management challenges, Pixitmedia is positioning itself as a partner that understands both storage infrastructure and creative workflows.