This paper provides a deep dive into the pros and cons of local, cloud, solid-state and linear tape-open storage solutions. It opens with John McKenna’s account of the YES Network’s digital transformation, and is followed by Jason Marshall’s summary of modular to virtual technology migration. This paper details ratios on high-performance broadcast data systems, as well as power consumption and solution tradeoffs. This paper aims to gain the reader’s confidence in virtualising a media asset system as well as converting linear systems to packet-based media technologies including transcoding, Active Archive and future SMPTE 2110 solutions.