With Azure Data Box, The WNET Group takes public television to the cloud and into the future

As a cornerstone of public media, The WNET Group has been shaping cultural conversations for generations. Serving communities across New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey, this nonprofit powerhouse brings audiences acclaimed programs like Nature, American Masters, Great Performances, Amanpour and Company and Cyberchase, enriching lives with content that bridges history and innovation. Operating since 1962, they’ve amassed an unparalleled archive of stories, footage, and milestones that continue to inform and inspire their work today.

But having such a rich history comes with its own set of challenges. With over 800,000 hours of content stored on physical LTO data tapes, preserving and accessing this massive media collection has created significant operational bottlenecks for WNET. When breaking news hits and producers need archival footage fast, the only option is to physically retrieve tapes from the office, a process that can take up to 24 hours. This became especially problematic when the organization shifted to predominantly remote work in 2020. Meanwhile, the ongoing need to refresh and maintain physical infrastructure further constrained WNET’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing industry demands and audience expectations.

"If we continue to make these big capital purchases over the long term and plan our investments in technology in these five to 10-year chunks, we may be closing ourselves off from the kind of flexibility we need to respond to what our audience wants," says Ryan Weston, director of technology solutions at The WNET Group.

For WNET, the answer wasn’t just technology, it was trust and transformation. Partnering with XenData, WNET launched a bold migration to the cloud, using Azure Data Box to move 3.6 petabytes of digital assets into Azure. This secure, high-capacity solution makes transferring massive datasets seamless when network transfers are too slow, costly, or impractical, unlocking agility that physical infrastructure could never match. 

As Weston explains: “It was really the involvement from a solutioning standpoint very early in the sales process, even before we made our commitment. It was clear that Microsoft understood what we were asking for and what we were hoping for.”

That confidence made Azure the obvious choice, enabling WNET to exit its physical datacenter while embracing flexible remote operations and future-ready scalability.

Finding the perfect data transfer solution

With 3.6 petabytes of irreplaceable content to migrate while maintaining 24/7 broadcast operations, WNET faced a critical question: How do you move decades of cultural heritage to the cloud without disrupting the present? Network transfers at that scale would have been prohibitively slow and expensive. The answer came through Microsoft’s deep partnership approach and technical expertise.

Microsoft's solutions architecture team introduced WNET and XenData to Azure Data Box next generation devices, available in two variants with 120 or 525 terabytes of usable capacity. These ruggedized, enterprise-grade data transfer devices make migrations much faster and secure, providing a very low effective cost per terabyte to move data into Azure.

For WNET, the 120-terabyte capacity device proved to be the Goldilocks solution. The smaller legacy devices would have required an overwhelming number of shipping cycles, stretching timelines beyond WNET's datacenter lease deadline and multiplying operational complexity. The larger option carried shipping costs so substantial they would have negated any efficiency gains. This perfectly sized middle option struck the ideal balance, allowing WNET to complete the migration in approximately 36 strategically planned rounds of data transfer. The result: a project delivered on schedule, within budget, and with the unwavering data integrity that irreplaceable broadcast content demands.

Unlocking potential through cloud-native capabilities

The migration to Azure represents far more than simply moving files from one location to another—it's a fundamental reimagining of what's possible for public media in the digital age. In conjunction with transferring its digital assets, WNET has been steadily digitizing its physical collection, which encompasses all content created before 2008. The organization is currently digitizing approximately 10,000 titles through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, rescuing decades of cultural programming from aging tape formats before they deteriorate beyond recovery.

Once this digitization is complete and every show resides in the cloud, WNET will unlock capabilities that were previously impossible with physical infrastructure. This approach aligns with the MovieLabs 2030 Vision, an industry initiative that emphasizes ingesting media directly to the cloud. This strategic shift positions public television alongside major studios in adopting cloud-first workflows.

"Once we get our media into the cloud, that's where we start to unlock our potential," Weston says. "That's what makes it available for machine learning to run speech to text on our whole collection, and for us to get creative about how we manage our media and how we preserve it over the long term."

A seamless transition that keeps things moving

The migration process has been remarkably smooth, a testament to both the Azure Data Box design and the XenData partnership. XenData manages the tactical execution of data transfer, while Weston tracks progress effortlessly through regular automated email updates that keep all stakeholders informed without requiring constant hands-on management.

Philip Storey, CEO of XenData, says the migration has been straightforward: "We simply moved the file folder structure from on-premises up into the Azure cloud and it was as simple as that." 

At the start of the migration, XenData made it even simpler for WNET by adding a XenData gateway to their LTO system. This allowed WNET to upload all new content directly to Azure and discontinue writing to its LTO data tapes entirely. Furthermore, by preserving the existing folder hierarchy and metadata structure, XenData and Azure Data Box enabled a seamless transfer with zero downtime, ensuring data remains immediately accessible the moment it lands in Azure.

This preservation of familiar workflows was absolutely critical for an organization that cannot afford to go dark. 

"We're a television station that's always on air, so this bus is never stopping, but we are still changing the wheels," Weston says. "Instead of writing to LTO data tapes, now we're writing to the Azure cloud with the same files and folders that's important for the existing infrastructure."

The brilliance of this approach means producers and editors experience no disruption to their daily work. The underlying infrastructure has fundamentally transformed, but the user experience remains consistent and reliable.

Transforming workflows and accelerating time to market

Migrating media to Azure has fundamentally transformed WNET's operational capabilities in ways that directly impact their ability to serve audiences and respond to the cultural moment. With the entire media collection stored in the cloud, team members can instantly access content from anywhere. That’s a game-changing capability for an organization that's predominantly remote and needs to move quickly.

Asset recovery will take less than 20% of the time it previously took to manually load tapes and then read the data. What previously required up to 24 hours of waiting and someone physically present in the office now takes four hours or less. It will also be a self-service, end-user-triggered event, freeing staff to focus on developing new products and capabilities rather than simply maintaining existing operations.

Quick access to media is especially critical in timely situations where WNET needs to respond to current events and maintain relevance with its audience. When breaking news requires archival context, producers can retrieve relevant footage the same day. The faster turnaround time enables the organization to be more agile and responsive to news and community needs, maintaining the cultural relevance that public media demands.

Looking ahead, WNET will use Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure NetApp Files to power its post-production environment, giving remote editors seamless access to high-performance virtual workstations. Azure Virtual Desktop enables secure, scalable desktop experiences from anywhere, while Azure NetApp Files delivers ultra-fast, low-latency file storage optimized for demanding workloads like 4K video editing. Together, they create a robust, cloud-native ecosystem that supports real-time collaboration across WNET's distributed workforce, bringing the same power and performance of a physical facility to editors working from home.

Leveraging Azure Data Box also allows WNET to exit its datacenter before completing work on a new media asset management (MAM) system, reducing time pressures on that parallel project and providing flexibility to optimize the MAM implementation without infrastructure deadlines looming.

Advice for other organizations: Partnership, patience, planning

For other media organizations considering a similar migration, Weston emphasizes the importance of partnership and trust: "When you're dealing with all of your content—the things that you make, the way that you interface with your audience—you have to enter into that with a very high level of confidence with the service provider."

He also advises organizations to be patient with cost estimation. "The process for cost estimation will take much longer than you expect. It is extremely difficult to do all this fuzzy math, and the insight from Microsoft has been extremely helpful. There was such a deep level of engagement helping to make sure that we understood what the best options were from a cost standpoint."

Story adds practical advice about timelines: "We knew what the timescale was: It had to be done in 12 months. So we specced equipment that could do it in six months if everything aligned perfectly. That two-to-one ratio is good."

For Weston, this transformation represents more than just a technology upgrade. This foray into the cloud has been an opportunity for him to "bring together my passion for doing things in a smart way but also being really human-centered and connecting our technology to what we are trying to accomplish as an organization."

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